Another Reason for Climate Paralysis
This climate conversation at the Wilson Center covers a lot of interesting ground and is well worth watching. For a taste, here’s one exchange between the host John Milewski and Edward Maibech, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.
Milewski: One theory I’ve heard, one reason I’ve heard that people respond almost with a glazed over look to this whole discussion is because it feels overwhelming.
Edward Maibech: It’s absolutely overwhelming. A lot of the messaging consistent with the climate science has been relatively apocalyptic. It’s scary. We don’t like to deal with fear unless there are options available to us to reduce the threat, so that we can turn back to the things we want to be doing.
Milewski: Do we have options?
Maibech: That’s a great question. I would actually suggest one of our options is to be a whole less frightening in the way we try to explain the issue of climate change to the American people. I think that’s a really important insight, that fear isn’t the answer. It tends to just get people to turn away.
There lies the problem….
withouth the fear and catastrophy I think these great ‘communicators’ will find the public even less interested, except for asking, why are we bothering with all those carbon (energy) taxes that are putting my fuel bills up.
Let’s assume for a moment that “Chicken Little” is dead and every Extremeist Save-The-World Nutcase died with him…. Oh, it’s a beautiful idea isn’t it? OK, now what happens? Hay! Let’s tackle this deficit problem and terminate a bunch of BIG government welfare entitlements. I think we should work in reverse order, back to say 1945. Last law passed, first law revoked. You know, like the way we downsize people who belong to Unions. Ready? Go!
Gee, I hope we don’t ever face a real-life challenge that genuinely is frightening and for which we have limited options and time to deal with it. ‘Cause it sounds like if that ever were the case, we would probably do nothing about it.
Fortunately the only types of challenges we’ll ever be able to face are unscary ones or ones that have ready options available to us so that we can get back to watching celebrity tv and stuff.
Seriously, it seems to me that this analysis is in some regards a navel-gazing exercise, since someone beat him to the insight that we are wired for “fight or flight”. Eureka!
Somewhat reassuringly, there is evidence that after a period of minimization and denial of a threat, we can eventually muster the collective will to do the difficult things required to address it. C.f. WWII for example.
I have a hard time believing this nonsense. If so, it means we should get rid of democracies post haste. I’m not ready for that.
“that fear … tends to just get people to turn away.”
Isn’t this claim refuted by the existence of Fox News?
I’m not saying we should adopt Fox’s techniques in communicating sustainability issues. I am saying that not only is the analysis confusing and mystifying if true. It also seems demonstrably wrong.
I think they fail to present one of the biggest obstacles, one you can find in their own publications:
http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/ClimateBeliefsMay2011.pdf
Q30. To the best of your knowledge, what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is happening? (May 2011)
81 to 100% 13
61 to 80% 19
41 to 60% 23
21 to 40% 12
0 to 20% 3
Don’t know enough to say 31
Wouldn’t you say, that failing to understand that more than 95% of the climate scientists think that global warming is happening (keep in mind, this does not even ask about why it is warming) is a major impediment to appreciate the severity of the situation.
Crying wolf has inevitable consequences, especially when the wolf turns out to be a poodle.
All the hysterical fear-mongering, backed by the pre-Climategate insistence that the debate was over, did most of the damage. That is what got me interested in this whole thing – when I started seeing Big Deliberate lies about polar bears. If the case was so clear, why did they need to lie to sell it?
Iraqi WMDs. AGW. In both cases they were ‘making us an offer we supposedly couldn’t refuse, using the same techniques. It is called extortion.
And this effort here to suggest that the ‘public’ just doesn’t want to accept the AGW story because they are afraid is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. I do not fear BS, I ignore it.
That there are now such things as Centers for Climate Change Communications tells us what we are really dealing with.
The “majority” of the carbon units infesting planet Earth are concerned first and foremost with day-to-day existance, survival, life, etc. To say that something is going to happen in 100 years defeats the attempt to make an impression and raise concern. To say that the climate in the next 10 years will be “x” barely makes a dent. To say that ENSO is going to wreck vacation plans for them next year is going to raise an eyebrow and maybe make them think of possibly contemplating a fallback alternative to their plans the next time they have time to think about next year and vacations. In other words, the more time they have the less they think something is important.
Now to the student, academic, or scientist involved in the “Climate Thing” this is absolutely terrible, irresponsible behavior. Shameful! Disgusting! Etc.! What to do! Scream louder? Pour gas on your head and strike a match? Make outlandish claims on the Tonight Show and get a few laughs? Chain yourself to a rickety old oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and go on a hunger strike? Publish a silly something in a Journal? Make and pay for a documentary to run on PBS with Al Gore as MC? Burn your bra or underwear at City Hall? Scream profanities from the Senate Gallery? Chain yourself to the White House fence? Support higher prices for Oil and things called Carbon Credits to make people realize you ain’t kidding? Bribe some Congress men and women who are a little ‘thin’ in the pocketbook? Make “Save the World” fliers and stuff them in your neighbor’s door every other day? Surf the web and comment on a bunch of blogs? Pray? Hummmmm… The alternatives seem to be endless.
Bluegrue (6)
You raise an interesting point but I think fail to put it in the proper context. Look at the other questions, there is significant believe in global warming and most respondents believe humans are mostly the cause with 39% viewing that most scientist think GW is occurring. So the question should be why people don’t either know about the 95% poll or I think more importantly don’t feel comfortable about reciting the figure. IMO it goes to David Ropeik’s concern about the feeling of being manipulated. I don’t want to argue the climate scientist poll but rather say the excessive use of polls by advocacy groups of all sorts has resulted in a certain immunization of the public to their effects.
I know you’ll probably delete this or keep in permanent moderation limbo, but at least FYI
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This is from a closed discussion group that included Edward Maibach that most likely forms standing instructions for the influential Desmogblog/James Hoggan public relations team.
Here: <a href=”http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/climate-disaster-desmog/”>Why are natural disasters linked to climate change? Answers from a public relations convention</a>
The conclusions Maibach and others (including A Leizerowitz reach behind closed doors is much different from what they would seem to openly support. Climate change is expressly linked to natural disasters because of the potential of utilizing fear as a mechanism to inject otherwise unaccepted frames.
Jeff Norris (9)
I disagree with your reading of the stats. It is a major difference, whether you think 55% of 99% of the scientists agree on something. You lump together categories which must not be mixed in this context.
I chalk up the discrepancy to the failure of the media to make the public aware of surveys like Doran 2009.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
I could understand unease in the public, but a journalist’s job is to get informed on the subject he/she is reporting on. You simply can not fail but notice, that there is a large consensus amongst climate scientists, that global warming is occuring and mankind contributes considerably. Pick your climate scientist at random and you have a better than 9 in 10 chance to get that view. You call a source and it tells you “A”. You call another and it tells you “A”. You call another and it tells you “A”, again. And again. And again. And again. How can any competent reporter fail to notice?!?!? How can it be, that large portions of the populace fail to know about this, but are left with the notion that AGW is still heavily disputed by large parts of the relevant scientists? Because they distrust scientists and polls and reporters, or because they are told in the newspapers and TV shows that there is controversy, again and again and again and again?
Shub (10),
Guilt by association is a time honored tactic of demagogues. You also provide no information for this “closed discussion” group and on top of that, offer rank speculation about it.
Then you assume the quote (who is it from?) speaks for everybody on that discussion group. Amazing. But why am I not surprised…
By your logic, anything anyone says on the informal, off-line discussion groups I belong to must speak for everyone in the whole group. Heh. Boy would all the varied participants get a kick out of that.
Shub, your quote in context
Over and over again, the Right has demonstrated that fear works to persuade the public, particularly when the goal is to maintain the status quo.
But fear isn’t the only thing that works, and it shouldn’t be exploited to dupe the public. Scaring people isn’t educating them, it’s petrifying them into prolonged inaction.
As long as you’re not trying to spread panic, or exaggerating the worst-case scenario, it’s fine to use some scary language to motivate people. Clearly it works, look at the success of the Tea Party, which is entirely based on fear framing.
We learned years ago the efficacy of using messages based on empowering people rather than scaring them. Yet we still don’t rely on empowerment as regularly as we do fear. There are some segments of the population that respond to fear, but identifying those segments at any given moment is difficult. Therefore, it would be wise to have a variety of messages.
Caveat: All must be credible, not sensationalized or exaggerated. […]
KK
There is no ‘guilt by association’ here.
You can follow the link I provided. It links directly to a detailed report by Brendan DeMelle and James Hoggan, about a conference sponsored by their main man, John Lefevbre in April 2010.
The conference attendees are listed on the website. Ed Maibach is listed. Anthony Leizerowitz is listed. These are prominent academic names in the ‘climate communication’ game, so I wouldn’t be surprised if people tried to use their names on their pet agendas. But one has to go by what is openly proclaimed – and that is the Stonehouse Standing Circle website.
Secondly, I offer no ‘rank speculation’. All I did was quote from their own report. Those words I quoted, are verbatim from the report – not mine.
I am sure Brendan and James formulated the report keeping in mind the content of the discussion that must have taken place during the meet (as opposed to just making stuff up).
The content of such a report will speak for everyone to the extent it does. As bluegrue rightly points out (although he’s probably has it in reverse), as per the report, the attendees rationalization for using ‘just a little bit of fear’ was to ‘learn from the right-wingers and the Tea Party’.
Bluegrue: please don’t just read the sentences. I ask to you try to digest what the report says. It wants to convey – ‘use a bit of fear – the right wing does it all the time and very effectively. But be a bit sensible about it and mix it up with other kinds of messages’. Then again, there are a lot of ideas in that report – a great deal quite honest and refreshing as well, from a environmental advocacy position, but nothing novel.
Thirdly, I am *not* saying: ‘Edward Maibach advocates use of fear’. Don’t try to pigeonhole here. I am not stupid. I am saying, there are circumstances where he and his colleages have been a part of discussion/strategy making that reaches opposite conclusions.
The proof for this lies in the constant association between climate change and natural disasters the climate change activist community makes, without missing a heartbeat, whether there be any scientific evidence available to support such actions, and certainly before any such evidence is available. This has happened the last year, quite frequently, as all of us would agree. This is precisely what this group decided. Again I am not saying there is a direct connection, either. But one can certainly take the trend of ideas reflected in the report, as a barometer of how climate communicators think. And that includes Maibach because his name is on there.
Lastly, if they were just informal coffee break talks – why would there be a website, laying out the ‘conference participants’ and the conclusions reached formalized in a report, a year later. I am pretty sure people like Maibach have better things to do than to just sit around chatting and have nothing come out of their spending time with others of their own kind.
Do these guys ever listen to themselves ?
“relatively apocalyptic”
What is a “relative apocalypse” ?
Shub, I followed all the links before responding the first time. I’m sure I’ve asked you this before: how do you manage to tie yourself in such knots and stay upright?
Bluegrue
WRT the role of journalism it seems we are down to two separate philosophies. A The press is the guide dog for the public. Or B The press is the watch dog for the public. Even though option B is noise and very inefficient I think most people prefer it.
I agree that the media likes controversy and conflict and as a result overplays the significance of the opposition. My impression is that you feel the press should at some point no longer present opposition to a policy or idea or at least judge the veracity or credibility of the opposition and express it in their reporting. Does this limit of dissent only apply to matters of science or does it cover finance and politics too?
My original point was that polling data does not have a lasting effect on the public nor will they put much significance on it.
I do admit that if a certain poll was repeated over and over again like 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum it would be remembered and easily cited by the publice. So if your desire is to have the public know the number you don’t need journalists, just buy air time.
Well, this is interesting. Who thought, and made it out, as though the sentence I put in blockquotes was attributable directly to Maibach? You did. The resolution of any ‘knots’ has to begin from there. Moreover, it is also interesting that you post a little comeback note with no facts/arguments to fall back on. Your jaundiced eye through which you percieve ‘skeptical demagogues’ like me is interfering with your vision, maybe. Or perhaps, the noble ideals of your colleagues and peers at ClimateCentral wont allow you to acknowledge uncomfortable facets of climate public relations reality I merely pointed out.
To the point however, the sentence from the report I quoted, is fairly representative of one of the main, overarching messages to come out of the report, and the meeting: ‘It is not only alright, but even desirable to exploit natural disasters to advance the cause of climate change, because the engendered state of fear is a transient period of vulnerability that can be fertile soil for implanting new messages’.
Unlike your journalist’s instinct perhaps suggested to you, I am not attempting to quote-attribute or quote-extract, and pin the results on Maibach, or any one person.
But, at the same time, the overall message the report conveys, is something fundamentally different from, and contradictory to the message you chose to quote and highlight. There is an interesting direct contradiction there, if curiosity would permit you to recognize.
I won’t even go into what Heidi Cullen talked about – massive snowstorms in January due to climate change? And she says the public is stupid when it comes to climate change.
Jeff Norris,
why do you present this false dichotomy? Press works both as a guide dog as well as a watch dog. Besides, my point is not about a single survey not being reported. Any journalist worth his/her salt could not fail but notice that more than 95% of the scientists working in climate science agree on both the reality of global warming and that mankind is a significant causation of it. You’ll see that by following the literature, you will notice by calling climate science departments at random, etc. In that case it is your job to inform the public in these terms and not to pretend that there is major disagreement. By all means, do report that there are a few vocal dissenters, do not silence them. But make it clear, that their position is a fringe position within the scientific community. Anything else is lying to your readership and deriliction of duty in your job as a journalist.
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