Effectively Communicating Climate Science beyond Academia: Harnessing the Heterogeneity of Climate Knowledge

Approaches to communicating climate science beyond academia are necessary for enhancing salience, understanding, and engagement and accelerating action. This Primer discusses the heterogeneous manner in which climate change messaging is received by different audiences, how social scientific approaches could help to better tailor climate change messaging to this varied landscape, and how attempts to close this gap must consider the emotional and affective dimensions of climate messaging. We explore how the use of narratives can enhance effective climate science communication and emphasize the importance of evidence-based advocacy in the current era of global challenges, uncertainty, and post-truth. Approaches to communicating climate science beyond academia are necessary for enhancing salience, understanding, and engagement and accelerating action. This Primer discusses the heterogeneous manner in which climate change messaging is received by different audiences, how social scientific approaches could help to better tailor climate change messaging to this varied landscape, and how attempts to close this gap must consider the emotional and affective dimensions of climate messaging. We explore how the use of narratives can enhance effective climate science communication and emphasize the importance of evidence-based advocacy in the current era of global challenges, uncertainty, and post-truth. People care about climate change. A series of recent surveys have shown that climate change is the second most important issue to people in the UK after Brexit (Climate Outreach 2019 survey) and that 60% of people think that addressing climate change requires a high or extremely high level of urgency (survey commissioned by the UK Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation in August 2019). The data show that people are more worried now than they were 3 years ago, and most admit that their concern has grown significantly in the last year as a result of the increase in weather extremes, media reporting, and climate activism. Yet, such concern and engagement with the issue are not met with sufficiently ambitious political action. Another survey conducted by Survation (not an environmental organization) in September 2019 found that a third of the British public thinks that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should be reduced to zero by 2025: 25 years ahead of the government’s target of 2050. Over 30% think the target should be brought forward to between 2025 and 2050. However, half of the British public thinks it is unlikely that the British government will achieve its net-zero-emission target by 2050, suggesting a lack of trust in political leadership. People’s lives will inevitably change as a result of climate change through responding to its impacts and the need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. People will need to make changes in terms of behaviors, work practices, and levels of consumption. As we have seen recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, the choices people make will be guided by government regulations, social practices, and individual decisions, all of which will be shaped by the availability of information and the way in which it is communicated. Improving the effectiveness of climate change communication means drawing on social science research and methods to a greater extent. In particular, recent work on the variety of factors that influence perceptions and attitudes toward climate change could prove to be a key tool in climate change communication. In doing so, a greater appreciation of the politics of objectivity in relation to scientific knowledge is key. In particular, it is crucial to understand what makes people listen to some views and not others and how this kind of authority varies between audiences. Nevertheless, making effective use of social science research means tackling the sometimes awkward epistemological disjuncture between natural and social scientific approaches. In particular, natural and social scientists must work together to consider how to align their messages to enhance public understanding and engagement. This Primer will outline the challenges and opportunities of climate change communication in three parts. First, it will highlight the heterogeneous manner in which climate change messaging is received by different audiences. Second, it will consider the gap between knowledge and action and how understanding the emotional and affective dimensions of climate messaging could play a role in closing this gap. Third and finally, it will conclude by considering how narrative rather than “problem-solution” framings play an important role both in understanding counterclaims to climate science and in effectively messaging scientific results. “Don’t listen to me; listen to the science,” entreats the iconic teen activist Greta Thunberg on a regular basis. And as usual, she’s right. Cathartic though her exhortations of truth to power might be, she is merely the messenger of a scientific cannon honed by billions of hours of rigor, insight, and debate. Yet such lofty feats of human reason rest on the earthy foundations of the scientific method: repeatable experiments, testable hypotheses, and above all the undergirding maxim that is laid down on the foundation of the Royal Society and still adorns its crest today, nullius in verba (take nobody’s word for it). Let evidence take precedence over even the most compelling orator or plausible opinion. This concept of critical objectivity is so ingrained in the scientific approach as to form a key pillar of identity for many scientists. Moreover, it is a position that has taken on new meaning in the era of climate change, extending beyond science and the academy as a clarion call amidst the white noise of post-truth. To back the science is to take the side of reason—to cut through the politics and posturing and stand firmly in the court of evidence. Yet removed from the rarified clarity of the laboratory, the disinterest that underpins the scientific method rapidly evaporates. Translating the carefully nuanced conclusions of the laboratory into lay and policy language necessitates a goal quite opposite to nullius in verba: the crafting of an authentic, authoritative voice on whose word an audience will accept an argument without recourse to further evidence. This is a transition that must be managed with care so that a degree of underlying rigor survives it, yet no approach is without pitfalls. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has discovered as its reports emerge in journalism, findings are often interpreted in interested ways without the “envelope” of definitions, caveats, and context that surround them in their original contexts and are newly imbued with microcosmic positionalities. Ever since the “Africagate” and “Amazongate” allegations of improper referencing and unsubstantiated claims levelled against the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007, climate scientists have been well aware of the ease with which politicized misinterpretation can drown out even the weightiest tomes of expertise. Soon after, the Tyndall Centre email hack in 2009 saw a single phrase—“Mike’s trick,” referring to the graphical transition from tree ring to thermometer data in Michael Mann’s 1999 hockey-stick graph—undermine a global green movement with false allegations of scientific conspiracy. It would be almost a decade before overall public “belief” in anthropogenic climate change recovered to the levels of 2009. However, problematic as such issues are for the public understanding of climate change, they are in reality the tip of the iceberg. As exemplified almost daily in relation to climate change, judgments over whose knowledge is worthwhile and whose is not are highly political acts. The proportion of those who “believe” in anthropogenic climate change and the seriousness of its impacts varies both according to country—and the prevailing national environmental discourse therein—and according to demography. In the US, for example, as shown in Figure 1, there is a 63-point difference between the most conservative Republicans (32%) and the most liberal Democrats (95%) claiming to be “somewhat” or “very” worried about climate change. Gender and race, similarly, are significant and consistent predictors of attitudes to climate change, leaving the conservative white male as an outlying—albeit disproportionately influential—low point in the data. Climate science in the world at large is therefore a hotly contested arena. Yet rather than being stymied by this diversity, communicators of climate change must embrace it and recognize that multiple approaches could be necessary for conveying ideas to a broad audience. In order to achieve this, climate change communicators must cultivate a renewed respect for the words long disavowed by the scientific method. Social science has only recently begun in earnest to get to grips with how climate change is affecting society, but its arrival, though late, has been fruitful. In particular, recent work on climate anxiety, climate change perception, and climate change denial have brought a nuanced conception of the public understanding of science. Effective climate change communication means harnessing the value of work in psychology, geography, sociology, and other disciplines in an active, as well as descriptive, sense. However, doing so will require a realignment of the politics of objectivity surrounding climate change. Long concerned with the production of irrefutable evidence capable of withstanding the rigors of a hostile environment, the improvement of climate change messaging requires a shift in emphasis. Rather than being bearers of a single objective truth, climate scientists and their communicators will need increasingly to acknowledge the subjectivities—including their own—that shape the perception of climate science. Rather than decrying their deviation from core scientific messaging, they must bring these complex, heterogeneous, and subjective interpretations of science within its wider rubric. As in all aspects of communication, “one size fits all” is rarely effective. Climate science must instead embrace the multiplicity of its own interpretation by recognizing that science sounds different to each listener and tailoring its messages accordingly. Those most capable of understanding scientific evidence as intended are also the most likely to be sympathetic to it, yet targeting this group alone will effect little attitudinal change. What might an effective climate change communication look like to those most skeptical of climate science? How, by contrast, might the same message be best communicated to those of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds? If a significant shift is possible in the contemporary politics of climate change, these questions will be at the forefront of efforts to instigate it. Communicating climate change is a key aspect of climate change governance at all levels. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which facilitates governmental negotiations on climate change, also recognizes the importance of engaging the public and empowering citizens at all levels to contribute to tackling the climate crisis. This is emphasized in Article 6 of the UNFCCC Convention (1992) and reiterated in Article 12 of the Paris Agreement (2015), although it is referred to as the more catchy Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). ACE incorporates six elements, as depicted in Figure 2. UNFCCC policy mandates that governments engage the public through these six, equally important avenues. This is based on a normative goal for citizens to supplement government action while also encouraging decision makers to commit to more ambitious policies. After decades of climate change communication, it has become clear that if mass mobilization is the goal, awareness raising through dissemination of scientific knowledge isn’t enough, even though it might be the simplest to facilitate. The problem is not a knowledge deficit, particularly in Europe and the US, where there have been a large number of campaigns on climate communication and outreach. Climate change skepticism is low, public awareness of and concern about climate change is high, and surveys in many countries have shown high levels of support for climate change policies, such as the deployment of renewable energy and reforestation. Despite this widespread support for climate action, behavioral change remains low. This is partly attributable to the failure of climate change scientists, concerned politicians, and practitioners to communicate climate change in a way that resonates with and empowers a wider audience. Each year since 2013, the UNFCCC has facilitated a dialog between policymakers, researchers, and practitioners during the “intersessional” climate change negotiations. In these interactive workshops, a number of experts from around the world have shared advice and best practices on how to enhance communication and engagement. They have highlighted several barriers to public awareness, such as a lack of funding for climate communications and the spread of misinformation, and have also identified various solutions. These include the importance of communicating solutions as well as problems, tailoring communication to specific audiences, and engaging people with narratives rather than statistics. These latter points were particularly emphasized by the UK organization Climate Outreach. They have created a range of publications on communicating with different audiences, such as 18- to 25-year-olds, the political center-right, and members of the five major faiths. They have also created a communication guide specifically for climate scientists from the IPCC. In this they highlight the importance of communicating authentically in order to be trusted as a messenger by relating discussions to people’s past experience and highlighting the relevance of problems to people’s daily lives. They also emphasize the power of storytelling to ensure that messages resonate with people’s diverse values and emphasize scientific consensus while carefully explaining uncertainty and the scientific method. Youth participants in the ACE dialogs have highlighted that their concerns are increasing as communities around the world experience extreme weather conditions and as climate change projections indicate dangerous runaway climate change, yet climate policies remain limited and insufficiently ambitious. Eco-anxiety is on the rise, and mental-health issues connected to climate change are increasing. Maria Ojala, associate professor of psychology at Örebro University in Sweden, has found that many young people feel pessimistic and unempowered about climate change, even in developed countries such as Sweden, as they experience a combination of worry for the future and guilt for being in countries more responsible for GHG emissions. Rather than being concerned with the risks to their own lives, youths express worry about impacts on future generations and vulnerable communities around the world. However, this could be partly a psychological response to distance themselves from the problem by framing it as removed from space and time. Ojala emphasizes the importance of intergenerational communication on climate change to alleviate these worries, particularly given that fear is compounded by the “spiral of silence” when climate change isn’t openly and frequently discussed. As such, it is necessary to promote hope rather than worry, and this to be and This an for the climate change that by the and of the of psychological research have the conditions which it is to use messaging to change people’s and have that messages need to be and and need to clear solutions to the this engage in social to reduce of is recent such as have many people by this to be with solutions to the public from into or Despite widespread awareness of climate change, behavioral change remains of a lack of clear ways in which and communities should accept that climate change is a but the that remains on their can about As trusted climate scientists can others by being seen as doing their the of and perceptions of widespread by and opportunities to engage in solutions. it to communicating climate change to in a way that the of what is and what is some of science need to be is a need to understand that science scientific knowledge is a result of social and is by the scientific scientific evidence is objective and of its or social science is and should not be for and is to scientific and skepticism by science is and and with a of This can be taken for particularly for scientific issues that are and current and future ways of and lives. This well to contexts where scientists are communicating within their own scientists to that they are not well or to communicate to audiences. This is problematic particularly when framings of climate change are to increase yet and in to knowledge and science communication at this level are not effective. science climate change action and on the the between science and means that barriers based on evidence. As an example, large reports such as the and UK Climate Change Assessment lack to and climate action on the the audience is government and policymakers, the for climate change information and evidence are evidence must be to and rapidly to the and of often significant of to and a problem to ensure that a and is in to that an and scientific is This can with the policy where is limited and where are on the of the best evidence and are often not or This means that communication on climate change can lack and relevance to be of use to decision We that use their cultural and political to information on climate change, which them to the risks of climate change and the solutions. is an on a of information where a “problem-solution” approach is and where it is that information about climate change therefore isn’t to help reduce GHG emissions through behavioral change. rather than on in knowledge or a on where there are in perceptions and a more way to engage with the issue and have more dialog on what is for for example, are an effective way of engaging and on issues that could be to engage with and to to an social help increase between people and meaning to and they to make of They are ways of enhancing understanding, and engagement with climate change and can a better to climate change solutions They can as effective for scientific evidence and with from and practitioners to form an and evidence use them to engage their as with their a better between and can be in a number of ways on the issue in the of the and the They help and issues such as climate change in a way that and resonates with people’s values and on what climate change impacts and solutions to In so doing they an effective way of increasing engagement and action on climate change through a of a and of science and increasing awareness about climate change, is not to instigate action. This to beyond and data to ensure that it with the and of specific audiences. is this is a to when communicating this will a tailoring of the message and ensure that to the issue is as high as This can be through addressing barriers to change that and a more of what a future for example, by the and of and opportunities from a how this will still people to and of how a transition to a future can have limited if carefully and what the of not might communication of climate change, as as it can be, must consider both of climate change and to the current and future climate often are and efforts conducted in partly of the way in which the science of and is conducted as well as the lack of and messaging on climate change. Moreover, it is of importance to recognize that climate science within this In order to effectively communicate scientific messages about climate change, we must recognize the role of politics in both dissemination and media to of scientific such the of scientific knowledge by the between and opinion. scientific communications are this as a to the message into multiple this has often stymied the effectiveness of climate change communication, yet it could as be an To ensure that scientific messaging is effectively out in are in and in order to and decision we need the need to on communicated and in a compelling and Yet, we that all members of an audience will and understand science in the way it is to consider what the audience about and is interested in and help the issue to these In particular, we need to recognize that the same message will be received by different and multiple messages to achieve the same effect a broad range of must from scientific and and a trusted messenger will ensure that are a change a range of and from making people feel to highlighting the with the changes in their is core to engagement and can help barriers to change and a better appreciation of the interpretation of information on climate change, as well as a better of the context of communication, while misinterpretation of communication and need to the current barriers that are and governments from making these changes and them as opportunities to instigate change that with their The support from the Royal Society Climate Change the on Climate Change and the at the of and the Centre for Climate at the University of and the UK and Social Climate Action