An inconvenient response

May 16, 2007

Getting the word out about human contributions to climate change is not as easy as one might think. How do we sound an urgent warning without being alarmists?

According to a BBC news report, Professor Mike Hulme of the UK's Tyndall Center has been studying people's respomses "to media portrayals of a catastrophic future."

Instead of prompting action, as one might hope, "strong messages...only seem to promote apathy."

It's not the media alone who are guilty in this regard, Hulme told the BBC: "There has been over-claiming or exaggeration, or at the very least casual use of language by scientists, some of whom are quite prominent."

In light of this, I am reflecting on a recent presentation of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to a community group as part of a broader presentation on climate change that I took part in. My assessment is that Gore manages to convey a sense of urgency without becoming alarmist. (See the BBC article for Hulme's examples of alarmist rhetoric.)

Indeed, I think we were successful in reaching people in the middle of the political spectrum with our program, but the more conservative members of our audience could not separate the messenger from the message. They viewed the movie as alarmist, and my attempts to discuss the IPCC consensus with that segment were nearly fruitless.

So the question for my readers is this: how can we sound an effective warning without discouragong the very people we hope to rouse to action?

i will have more to say about this after I publish my review of Chris Mooney's new book, "Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming", in July. Mooney makes some interesting comments about people who overstate the implications of scientific conclusions on both sides of the subject. He also talks about what scientists and journalists can do to avoid what I would call an inconvenient public response.

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