Essay on Communicating Climate Change

8/9/2019 Essay on Communicating Climate Change

1/16

On Communicating Global Climate Change

Roxana N. Nicolaas Ponder


2/16

Index

The Rise of Global Warming

Global climate change a short history

Scientific Uncertainty vs. Journalistic Certainty

The science

The journalism

International and National Governments

IPCC

The Dutch Government

Post-Normality

Additional aspects to science

A New Methodology

Transcending Boundaries

Final Remarks References


3/16

The rise of global warming

Over the past few decades, the concept of anthropogenic climate change has

evolved from a tentative idea to a tenacious fact. Millions - if not billions - of

dollars are spent annually on climate research, adaptation to and mitigation of

global warming, and public campaigns concerning global climate change. The

entire world population is at stake here: if scientific predictions, as depicted in the

media, are right and sea water levels keep rising, the consequences of our actions

are beyond imagination.

The climate change issue is characterized by two major factors: on one

hand the complex nature of the climate, and the enormous number of

stakeholders on the other hand. As a result, this problem requires a novel

approach, one that complements existing methods.Unfortunately, tackling this problem initiated in the usual way. Starting in

the 70s, climate research developed markedly (Weingart et al. 2000). Meanwhile,

journalists paid more and more attention to climate change, and man-made global

warming in particular. The media focus on dramatic events, as this lies in the

nature of journalism, and try to make the issue as spectacular as possible. This

conduct influences the publics cognition and perception of climate change issues

tremendously (Lowe et al. 2006). The press brought climate change to our

doorsteps.

As the public got acquainted with the global warming issue, however

distorted their percepts, they started obliging governments to take action. It was

not until the late 80s that political bodies acknowledged the climate change issue,

and took it into account during meetings (Weingart et al. 2000).

My personal opinion is that governments should have an active, rather than

inactive, stance. Especially concerning complex issues that have large-scale

consequences, governments should act before press or public.

Global climate change a short history

The science of anthropogenic climate change originated in 1827, when


4/16

Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Fourier first recognized the greenhouse effect (Houghton

2005). Some 30 years later, John Tyndall, a British scientist, found that both

carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor absorb infrared radiation. We experience

this type of radiation as heat.

The first climate model that included greenhouse gases such as water vapor

and CO2 was conceived by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

Arrhenius calculated that if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubled, the

global temperature would on average increase by 5 to 6 Celsius.

It was not until the 1970s that the scientific community seriously started

investigating anthropogenic global climate change (Weingart et al. 2000). As was -

and still is - normal, scientists published their results at conferences and in

scientific journals, where their results are freely available for both policymakers

and journalists.

As science on global warming developed, media coverage increased in a

way that would be regarded appropriate. In a recent study, Peter Weingart (2000)

and colleagues quantified the relative frequency of attention for global climate

change in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, and compared it to the

relative frequency of attention given to the subject 1) in German scientific

periodicals and 2) by the German parliament.

Until 1987, the parliament paid little to no attention to the climate issue.

Political attention increased since then, marked by the establishment of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) in 19881. The IPCC was found

by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations

Environmental Programme (UNEP).

After the establishment of the IPCC, media attention on global climate

change increased drastically, resulting in a coverage disproportional to the

scientific and political discourse. Governments are drawn into the climate hypeinitiated by the media. In 2004, Hollywood releases one of its first films that

depicts the possible consequences of global climate change, namely The Day

After Tomorrow. Massive campaigns are set up, each trying to convince the public

1 http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm


5/16

that global climate change is man-made.

There is indeed at least an illusion of scientific consensus (Oreskes 2004). In

2004, Naomi Oreskes analyzed 928 abstracts, published in peer-reviewed journals

between 1993 and 2003, with the key words global climate change. None of the

papers disagreed with the consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real.

The 2004 study of Oreskes is extensively cited in articles favoring scientific

consensus of climate change. As noted earlier, she did not find one in 928 papers

with the keywords 'global climate change' that denied scientific consensus. One

has to bear in mind, however, that journals may loose many readers if they

publish controversial results, and therefore choose not to publish articles that

disagree with the consensus position. In addition, the large number of articles that

do agree with the consensus may also correlate with funding practices.

Then - on July 2, 2006 atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard S. Lindzen

publishes an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, saying: Al Gore is wrong. There's no

"consensus" on global warming. Presently, media don't report on environmental

risks (as much as they used to), but on climate skepticism. Up until now, the

pinnacle of this shift of focus is the BBC documentary The Great Global Warming

Swindle, which was broadcasted on March 8, 2007 on the United Kingdom's

Channel 4.

It may be obvious that, over the years, the climate issue evolved into a

problem, and the climate problem has grown to be an immense problem,

involving billions of people and vast amounts of money. In this essay I will try to

get a better understanding of the perspectives of and communications between

some of the relevant parties in the climate problem, namely scientists, journalists,

policymakers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public, after which

I will give my own opinion on the state of affairs, and formulate some guidelines

that will facilitate the communication of complex problems.

Scientific uncertainty vs. journalistic certainty


6/16

The science

In principle, science can never prove anything.

You can repeat an experiment 10,000 times,

and conclude that something seems very

probable, but you can never be absolutely surethat the same thing will happen the 10,001st

time. A great help in tackling this problem is

statistics, which determines just how probable

a specific phenomenon is.

The principle is obvious when examining

scientific literature. It is customary - at least in the natural sciences - to provide

confidence intervals with the reported results, which account for the uncertainty

that scientists deal with. It is not without a reason that many scientific articles end

with sentences like: Our results strongly suggest X, however, more research is

needed.

In reference to climate computer models, the uncertainty increases by at

least a factor two. In addition to the uncertainty in the outcome, there is no

certitude regarding the input variables. Putting together this fact, and the

understanding that the output solely depends on the input, one can conclude that

predictions or projections rendered by these models may be a useful tool, but

should by no means be used as the primary method for understanding,

predicting, and thereby managing global warming.

The journalism

In utter contrast with the uncertainty experienced and expressed by scientists,

the media have been reporting findings as if they were as true as the Pope's

catholicism (Weingart et al. 2000). The reason for this is not hard to comprehend;

a title such as 'Cure for Cancer Maybe Found' would not attract a lot of readers,

hence the paper will not be sold, the TV-program will not be viewed, and the radio

will be switched to a different channel. Thus, media have to 'translate hypothesis

into certainties' (Weingart et al. 2000).


7/16

The most important hypothesis that is now

commonly accepted by the broad public is that the

anthropogenic increase of atmospheric CO2 is

causing global climate change. A small number of

titles that appeared in the German news magazine Der Spiegel are listed in box

1.

Another criterion for 'good news' is the relevance of the news for the

individual (Hansen 1994; Carvalho 2007). This is conflicting in the climate issue,

as climate timescales encompass periods of time that exceed our individual

lifetimes. The media, however, reduced the climate timescale to a meteorological

timescale, making the climate issue much more associable (Weingart et al. 2000).

A noteworthy aspect of journalism is selection. Subjects and views that

appear in the press are not sought or found randomly. Moreover, journalists select

their own sources, and, within those sources, select what information is passable.

Thus, journalists and editors form a tight selection mechanism, only passing down

information which they find suitable for us, the public.

Previous research as well as his own led Hansen (1994) to conclude that the

images journalists have of their readers is hardly based upon surveys, rather, they

are based upon the journalists' perceived ability. This way, the people do not get

the information they want, but journalists give people what theythink the people

want.

Although scientific consensus on the anthropogenic origins of climate

change is indeed strong, a disproportionate amount of light is being shed on

climate skeptics. Apparently, after 40 years of reporting on the risks of climate

change, the media got updated on progress in the scientific community. They

discovered a handful of skeptical scientists that openly doubted the extend to

which the prevailing theories were true. This was novel and controvertible, whichare also criteria for selecting what news to bring (Carvalho 2007).

In a recent study, Anabela Carvalho (2007) points out that 1) not only do the

media give selective attention to those aspects that are novel, controvertible, and

relevant to the individual, and that 2) the amount of media attention focused on

Box 1: Titles of articles concerningglobal warming published in DerSpiegel

1979: Tod im Treibhaus1980: In 50 Jahren vorbei1981: Auf dem Weg in die


8/16

climate change increases, but also that 3) the way in which the news is brought

highly influences public understanding. Often, the seemingly innocent words the

journalist chooses may subconsciously convince the reader or viewer of a fact that

is not actually a fact.

Added up, one can conclude that the public by now must be quite confused:

the scientific consensus that appeared so solid all of the sudden melts away, like

snow in the sun. Indeed, a recent study (Stamm et al. 2000) shows that the media

contribute to the misconceptions the public has regarding global warming. The

same study, however, also pointed out that interpersonal communication as at

least as important as mass media in conveying information. These findings

suggest that a more (inter)personal approach to solving the misconceptions could

be highly effective.

International and National Governments

For unidentified reasons, governments remained unconcerned with the climate

issue until the late 1980s (Weingart et al. 2000). The little attention given to it

mostly focused on short term consequences. It was not until the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was found in 1988 that national

governments from around the world recognized a problem, and include the issue

in their agendas.

IPCC

The IPCC is a scientific body, consisting of scientists and governments1. It was set

up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations

Environmental Programme (UNEP) to provide an objective source of information

for policymakers about 1) the causes of climate change, 2) its potential

environmental and socio-economic consequences and 3) the adaptation and

mitigation options to respond to it.

1 http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm


9/16

It must be noted that the IPCC does not carry out research itself, but

assesses the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature. Through

extensive literature research, the IPCC produces among other reports -

Assessment Reports, which describe the current knowledge on climate change.

The fourth and latest Assessment Report was released on November 17, 2007.

Integrity

Although the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace

Price with Al Gore in 2007, a number of leading

scientists such as Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founding

director of the International Arctic Research

Center (IARC), question the IPCCs modes of

operation. Akasofu accuses the IPCC for not

looking at new evidence, which shows that it's

not CO2 that influences temperature, but

temperature affects atmospheric CO2 levels

(see for instance Pagani et al. 2005; Caillon et

al. 2003). In addition, says Akasofu, the majority of scientists involved in the IPCC

are meteorologists and physicist, rather than climatologists2.

The IPCC based a significant part of their reports on results from computer

modeling. Demeritt (2001) puts forth the IPCCs stance on climate modeling: 'it is

the most credible method for understanding, predicting, and thereby managing

global warming'.

With the use of climate models, scientists try to prove that the rise in

temperature from 1900 onwards is caused by CO2. Models are told that the

warming of the last 100 years is caused by the greenhouse effect, and are then

asked to calculate, based on the input given by scientists, what will happen in thefuture. Given the complexity of the earth's climate system, it is impossible to

incorporate each and every factor that influences the climate, and thus build a

fitting model.

2 http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/misleading.php


10/16

Furthermore, the climate models are created by modeling individual factors,

and then combining every individual factor into one big model (Saloranta 2001).

Understanding these models is only possible for a small number of expert

modelers and physicists, therefore, the majority of scientists and policymakers

have to presuppose that the modelers know what they are doing, and are

reporting the whole truth. Moreover, by combining individual models into one big

model, the latter will be prone to ignore any synergetic effects of individual

factors.

In addition, many scientists whose work is adopted by the IPCC base their

results on satellite data, rather then so-called proxy data: data collected from

natural recorders of climate variability. Whereas satellite data is available from the

1970s, the entire history of the earth's climate is obtainable from proxy data.

Because satellite data only covers the last 40 years of climate change,

although it may be a valuable tool, by no means it should be used as the most

important information source. Climatology deals with time periods of millions, if

not billions, of years. Compared to that, 40 years is minute.

Surely, the IPCC is an organization that has excellent goals. However, it

may be desirable for the IPCC to review their methods, and bear in mind that

science is negotiation, and provides only provisional theories and answers.

The Dutch Government

The political discourse in the Netherlands started, in accordance with Weingart's

findings, in the late 1980s3. It was not until after 1990 that the Dutch government

actively participated in setting up international and European goals for mitigation

of and adaptation to climate change. The Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial

Planning and the Environment presented the first National Adaptation Strategy in

October 20084.

One of the main goals of the Dutch National Adaptation Strategy is to realize

a behavioral change in governmental institutions, business corporations, societal

3 Available from the VROM website http://www.vrom.nl/pagina.html?id=22990#b22072

4 http://www.vrom.nl/pagina.html?id=34509&term=maak+ruimte+voor+het+klimaat


11/16

organizations, and individual citizens5. To achieve this behavioral change, all

parties involved need to become aware of the problem. According to the Dutch

ministry, this can be accomplished by applying active communication strategies,

which should help elucidate climate related risks. Secondly, the ministry hopes to

assure that, based on demand, enough information is available and accessible.

Thirdly, the ministry wants to support the adaptation process by adjusting laws

and customs.

In this essay I will focus on how the government plans to raise awareness on

the climate issue. The ministry wants:

1. to engage in dialogues with the relevant parties, explaining what adaptation

is, what can be done, and why we need to do it;

2. to create a sizable platform for and active participation of the Dutch

population in making the Netherlands climate proof;

3. to provide clarity on who is responsible for what;

4. schools to start focusing on adaptation from primary school onwards;

5. investigate whether it is possible to have insurance companies give people

more money back for water-damages, floods and droughts;

6. to reinforce the image of the Netherlands as a safe and economically

appealing climate to settle.

This approach is tending towards transdisciplinary methods. However, from the

goals stated above it is not clear whether lay expertise will be used for decision-

making. The Dutch governments seeks to clearly inform the Dutch public, and

have them actively engaged in dialogues or at forums, but doesn't explicate

whether these dialogues will be taken into account in the process of policymaking.

I argue that this is what the Dutch government ought to do: listen to what

lay experts have to say. These lay experts may include normal citizens, business

and media representatives, professionals, and other stakeholders. Lewenstein(2003) canvasses: 'the lay expertise model assumes that local knowledge may be

as relevant to solving a problem as technical knowledge'.

I believe it is important for policymakers to listen to every party involved, as

5 From: Nationale Adaptatiestrategie de beleidsnota


12/16

it is for them that policies are made. Although it is noble of the ministry to want to

inform people clearly and correctly, give them room for dialogue, and have them

actively participate in obtaining common goals, I applaud a lay expertise model,

rather than the contextual model proposed by the ministry.

Post-normality

It is possible to fill 200 pages analyzing and reflecting communication on climate

change, as Arjan Wardekker showed in his Master's thesis. This will not be done

here. Instead, I will shortly consider a new method of approaching complex

problems like global climate change, genetically modified organisms, or disease

outbreak.

An initiative for applying new methods will probably originate in the

scientific community. Politicians are too busy trying to get votes, governments are

too busy solving the ongoing mess, business are busy by definition, and the public

is just not sufficiently informed. Luckily, scientists may find some excellent

partners in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). (A commendable initiative of

development, humanitarian and nature conservation NGOs in the Netherlands is

the climate program Hier!, whose fundamental idea it is to stress the immediate

necessity to implement adaptation projects and initiatives to climate change6.)

I would like to introduce the notion of post-normal science here, a

methodology conceived by Funtowicz and Ravetz (Saloranta 2001). Post-normal

science acknowledges that science is a social process, and therefore value-laden,

and science deals with uncertainty rather than certainty. I have explained above

that uncertainty lies in the nature of science, so I will only touch upon the social

aspect of science here.

Additional aspects to science

Science and politics exert reciprocal influence on each other; policymakers

demand facts and numbers, where science can only supply hypotheses. Scientists

6 http://www.hier.nu/hier/here/?pagenr=163


13/16

may even be forced to accommodate their findings so that they suit the political

agenda7.

Science on the other hand requires funding, so the research questions

formulated by scientists are likely to be influenced by the demands of

policymakers (Demeritt 2001). Furthermore, social relations between scientists,

but also between science and politics, play a more important role than ever. As an

example of the former: regarding the climate issue, the so-called James Annen

wager was a point of discussion in the media as well as the scientific community

(Bailey, 2005).

A new methodology

Post-normal science is applicable: whenever high stakes, risks and/or high

uncertainty are involved in a policy-relevant issue (Saloranta 2001). It uses an

extended peer community to take part in scientific problem-solving processes,

involves communication of technical as well as methodological, epistemological

and ethical uncertainty, and is issue-driven rather than based on existing

knowledge and methods.

Transcending boundaries

Post-normal science shows noticeable overlap with transdisciplinary research.

Both recognize the uncertainty and complexity of modern day problems, and

propose methods that transcend traditional boundaries between science,

governments, industry, and social organizations. The fading of these boundaries is

also recognized by Gibbons (2000) in his Mode-2 society.

Three central concepts in transdisciplinary research (TD) are 1)

participation, 2) knowledge integration, and 3) process facilitation. The

stakeholders that engage in the dialogue should be willing and able to participate,

but should also be capable of letting go of their thought frames. Local knowledge

should be combined with scientific and/or technical knowledge; implicit

knowledge is made explicit in transdisciplinary research. Thirdly, TD involves a

7 http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11074-us-climate-scientists-pressured-on-climate-change.html


14/16

mutual learning process, which needs to be facilitated.

TD researchers should have adequate procedures and adequate support,

and transparency is highly desirable. Most important, the management and

facilitation of such processes should be competent and unbiased.

The urge to reduce complexity is a barrier on the way to TD. Another

obstacle is the autonomy of disciplines, and the accompanying 'language barrier'.

Physicists talk a different language than social scientists, and biologists have a

different jargon than psychologists. Ignoring the human longing for certainty,

results of TD are complex and unpredictable. Lastly, the current dominant way of

thinking and acting inside boxes is not useful in TD research.

Final remarksThe goal of this essay was to get a better understanding of communication

between science, media, policymakers and the public concerning the global

climate change issue. I have touched upon the discrepancy between science and

journalism, the former has an uncertain nature, while it lies in the essence of

journalism to present facts, despite the efforts of scientists to be clear about

uncertainty. However, it would be wrong to prevent the media from reporting.

Therefore, it is necessary that the public and other stakeholders are informed

clearly and correctly. As was shown by Keith Stamm (2000), interpersonal

communication proved to be highly effective in conveying information. Therefore,

a more local governmental approach is needed to rectify the misconceptions that

exist. Post-normal science and/or transdisciplinary research will be a helpful tool in

solving this and other complex problems.

References

Akasofu, S. Misleading Information on Global Warming. [online] Available from:


15/16

http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/misleading.php (Accessed January 23, 2008).

Bailey, R. 2005. Betting on Climate Change. Reason Magazine. [online] Available from:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34976.html (Accessed January 25, 2008).

Caillon, N. et al. 2003. Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across

Termination III. Science 299:1728-1731.

Carvalho, A. 2007. Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge: re-reading

news on climate change. Public Understanding of Science 16:223.

Demeritt, D. 2001. The Construction of Global Warming and the Politics of Science. Annals of the

Association of American Geographers 91:307-337.

Gibbons, M. 2000. Mode 2 society and the emergence of context-sensitive science. Science and

Public Policy 27:159-163.

Hansen, A. 1994. Journalistic practices and science reporting in the British press. Public

Understanding of Science 3:111134.

Houghton, J. 2005. Global warming.Reports on Progress in Physics 68:1343-1403.

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change About IPCC [online] Available from:

http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm (Accessed January 23, 2008).

Lewenstein B.V. 2003. Models of public communication of science and technology unpublished

[online] Available from: http://www.dgdc.unam.mx/Assets/pdfs/sem_feb04.pdf

Lindzen, R.S. 2006. Don't Believe the Hype. The Wall Street Journal[online] Available from:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597 (Accessed January 24, 2008).

Lowe, T. et al. 2006. Does tomorrow ever come? Disaster narrative and public perceptions of climate

change.Public Understanding of Science 15:435.

Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and Environment 2007. Nationale Adaptatiestrategie de

beleidsnotitie, available from:

http://www.vrom.nl/get.asp?

file=docs/kamerstukken/Fri2Nov20071629420100/ARKBeleidsnotitieMR2nov07.pdf

New Scientist. 2007 US climate scientists pressured on climate change. [online] Available at:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11074-us-climate-scientists-pressured-on-
http://www.vrom.nl/get.asp?file=docs/kamerstukken/Fri2Nov20071629420100/ARKBeleidsnotitieMR2nov07.pdfhttp://www.vrom.nl/get.asp?file=docs/kamerstukken/Fri2Nov20071629420100/ARKBeleidsnotitieMR2nov07.pdfhttp://www.vrom.nl/get.asp?file=docs/kamerstukken/Fri2Nov20071629420100/ARKBeleidsnotitieMR2nov07.pdfhttp://www.vrom.nl/get.asp?file=docs/kamerstukken/Fri2Nov20071629420100/ARKBeleidsnotitieMR2nov07.pdf


16/16

climate-change.html (Accessed January 24, 2008).

Oreskes, N. 2004. BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.

Science 306:1686-1686.

Pagani, Mark, James C. Zachos, Katherine H. Freeman, Brett Tipple, and Stephen Bohaty. 2005.

Marked Decline in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations During the Paleogene.

Science 309:600-603.

Saloranta, T. M. 2001. Post-Normal Science and the Global Climate Change Issue. Climatic Change

50:395-404.

Stamm, K. R., F. Clark, and P. R. Eblacas. 2000. Mass communication and public understanding of

environmental problems: the case of global warming. Public Understanding of Science 9:219.

Wardekker, J. A. 2004. Risk Communication on Climate Change. MSc. Thesis Utrecht University[online] Available from: http://www.chem.uu.nl/nws/www/publica/Publicaties2004/e2004-120.pdf

Weingart, P., A. Engels, and P. Pansegrau. 2000. Risks of communication: Discourses on climate

change in science, politics, and the mass media.Public Understanding of Science 9:261.

Wickson, F., A. L. Carew, and A. W. Russell. 2006. Transdisciplinary research: characteristics,

quandaries and quality.Futures 38:1046-1059.

Documents

Essay on Communicating Climate Change