Communicating Climate Change: Making the Science Accessible

The antarctic is melting w002n54 84m sea level...

The antarctic is melting via Flickr

In spite of a global scientific consensus on climate change, policy makers and the public still lag far behind in terms of recognizing the urgency of global warming and acting accordingly. Major news outlets (*cough,* Washington Post, *cough cough*) continue to disseminate confusing and misleading denial arguments, and well-meaning scientists and journalists struggle to articulate the realities of climate change to those who will shape the planet’s future. Perhaps a standardized language of global warming is needed.

Thomas Bowman, president of an organization that helps organizations make sustainable choices, authored a letter in the journal Science calling for a common language when discussing some of the more abstract ideas surrounding climate change. Along with researchers from George Mason University, Penn State University and elsewhere, Bowman suggests ways to help the public catch up to the science.

“At this critical moment, scientific understanding has outstripped our society’s capacity to use that knowledge by a wide margin,” they wrote. “This situation must be resolved quickly to give policymakers–and the public–the broadest range of options.”

Some of the recommended measures could indeed help with public discourse on the topic. For example, discussing what Bowman calls carbon dioxide-equivalent instead of just carbon dioxide would allow the inclusion of all greenhouse gases (such as methane and nitrous oxide) without cluttering the argument with chemical acronyms. But the more important point here is that communicating climate change is a difficult task, and in some sense a sea change is needed before the public and policy makers truly can catch up to the science.

The most commonly cited source for our collective knowledge on global warming is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. As Bowman points out, wading through the documents put forth by this well-respected group is a chore for anyone, let alone an under-informed public servant. The inherent difficulty in convincing politicians to take seriously one degree of warming over several decades lies in the long-term nature of the issue, and the relative dearth of hard facts and examples to which we can turn. It is that reason that some specific effects of warming—such as the melting ice sheets or the potential for stronger hurricanes—become such hot-button issues. They are tangible images, unlike the invisible collection of hard-to-explain gases in the atmosphere. There’s a reason the image above isn’t a graph showing methane concentrations over the last 30 years.

As Bowman’s letter states, policy-related discussions involving global warming rarely stick to the science: “Unfortunately, politicized debate has overshadowed scientific understanding in public discourse.” His suggestions to standardize the language of climate change will help, but finding ways to arouse the public on what lies ahead for the planet have yet to be discovered.