Over the past few years, a growing body of research from the social sciences has pointed to one of the major challenges in communicating about climate change.  This research suggests that many political leaders, environmentalists, and scientists--by focusing narrowly on the risks of climate change-- may unintentionally trigger disbelief, skepticism, or decreased concern among audiences.

A forthcoming study at the journal Psychological Science  by researchers at UC Berkeley provides further insight into these challenges, suggesting that what is needed is a shift in communication away from a focus on the threat of climate change to a much stronger focus on clear and realistic policy solutions.

Emphasis on Catastrophe and Threat

There has been much speculation about the reasons for a shift in public opinion in the U.S. on climate change since 2007.  In surveys, fewer people report concern over climate change, fewer report that they accept that human activities are causing climate change, and a growing number of Americans say that they believe that the news media exaggerate the problem. 

Speculation about the cause of these shifts tends to narrowly focus on the perceived influence of climate skeptics—and even single events such as “Climategate.”  Yet more parsimonious and likely explanations include the performance of the economy and as the emerging research suggests, a de-sensitization among segments of the public to climate change fear appeals, messages that peaked in 2007 with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the record amount of news attention to the climate issue, coverage that also tended to focus on extreme impacts and risks.

Many political leaders and environmental advocates--while citing scientific evidence--tend to emphasize, visualize, and portray the most dramatic of climate impacts.  These climate fear appeals, represented perhaps best in An Inconvenient Truth, focus on depictions of rising sea levels, the devastation from severe hurricanes and storms, and the threat to symbolic species such as the polar bear. These types of catastrophe narratives were also, as an example, vividly used in the video that launched last year's Copenhagen meetings. In another example, prominent climate blogger Joe Romm has alternatively referred to climate change in terms such as "Hell and High Water," [the title of his book] or "global weirding."

Generally more careful in their discussion of extreme impacts, climate scientists also tend to use a language heavily steeped in threat, emphasizing terms such as "catastrophic," "rapid," "urgent," "irreversible," "chaotic," and "worse than previously thought."  President Obama's science advisor John Holdren and others have also suggested that less euphemistic, more dramatic terms are needed than climate change or global warming suggesting instead that the problem be re-named "Global Climate Disruption."

And given the amount of climate science that forecasts and draws attention to likely impacts and risks, journalists when reporting on new studies and research, tend to focus on these impacts.  A leading example appeared this past Sunday in a front page feature at the New York Times headlined "Rising Seas Predicted as Threat to Coastal Areas."  Other examples include Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker series and book "Field Notes From a Catastrophe."

Gaining Public Attention But With Negative Consequences

A study published last year by researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, applies past research in health communication to understand the likely limitations and negative consequences of using fear appeals to engage the public on climate change. As the researchers note: