Navigating the ocean of AGU requires patience. For a newcomer, parsing the inch-thick spiral-bound notebook of presentations, with pages of maps of the enormous Moscone Center, is a bit like finding your way around a city in a foreign language (at least there’s a nice crossword puzzle on Page 31).
You need the right tools to understand what’s going on, and to get where you need to go. Columbia researchers have been looking for the right tools to navigate another complicated place: The gap between what climate science tells us, and how a lot of the public hears that information, and what policymakers are prepared to do about it. They’re giving a couple of talks on the subject at AGU.
On Wednesday, Mary-Elena Carr will join colleagues from the Columbia Climate Center Lamont-Doherty to talk about “Climate Information and Misinformation: Getting the Message Out.” With researchers from Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors, they looked at three ways to address climate change skepticism: blogging about it, talking to people in discussion groups, and writing a report.
“As scientists, I think we sometimes come at it in a very naïve way,” Carr says. If you just give people the facts, they should be able to figure it out. That didn’t work when they blogged: Pushing the climate hot button led down a rabbit hole of contention and suspicion. The discussion group left participants hungry for more information.
The conclusion: That using a single report – like one Carr prepared for Deutsche Bank in 2009 – is the best way to address the skeptics. Ultimately, Carr says, you need a variety of sources talking about climate change, including political and religious leaders – and people the audience can identify with.
On Thursday, Sabine Marx of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions will speak on “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication.” She has studied how different groups of people think about climate, and how to use that information to talk about the science.
“For most people abstract information does not translate into powerful vivid images that would trigger action,” Marx wrote. “Furthermore, we have found that people’s interpretation of scientific uncertainty can get in the way of using forecasts and projections. Other barriers include public risk perceptions and attitudes, cultural values, and myopia, as well as the importance that people place on self-interest/economic goals vs. collective interest/social goals.”
But, Marx says, there are ways to overcome these barriers. For instance, you can start with a good story.
