Problems with communication

It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn't listen to each other as they once had. They weren't interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. "They want to impose their opinions rather than express them," is the way he describes what he saw.


From "The Agony of Frank Luntz" by Molly Ball on "The Atlantic"

You are screwed

Not sure if this is the right way of communicating how the government tries to fix the world's problems, but it is a kind of communication, anyway.

You never actually own the Earth. You merely take care of it for the next generation

The positive power of advertising. (h/t Ljljana Rodic-Wiersma)

Up yours, IPCC!

George Monbiot has produced a chilling assessment of the way the recent IPCC report has been ignored. Here are some excerpts.

Climate Breakdown

How governments bemoan the problem but keep stoking the fires.


By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th September 2013

....

What the (IPCC) report describes, in its dry, meticulous language, is the collapse of the benign climate in which humans have prospered, and the loss of the conditions upon which many other lifeforms depend. Climate change and global warming are inadequate terms for what it reveals. The story it tells is of climate breakdown. This is, or so it seems, a catastrophe we are capable of foreseeing but incapable of imagining. It’s a catastrophe we are singularly ill-equipped to prevent.

.....

But denial is only part of the problem. More significant is the behaviour of powerful people who claim to accept the evidence but keep stoking the fires. This week the former Irish president Mary Robinson added her voice to a call that some of us have been making for years: the only effective means of preventing climate breakdown is to leave fossil fuels in the ground(9,10). Press any minister on this matter in private and, in one way or another, they will concede the point. Yet no government will act on it.

As if to mark the publication of the new report, the department for business, innovation and skills has now plastered a giant poster across its groundfloor windows: “UK oil and gas: Energising Britain. £13.5bn is being invested in recovering UK oil and gas this year, more than any other industrial sector.” The message couldn’t have been clearer if it had said “up yours.”


Complete article

Global Warming has stopped: the meme that won't go away

Image from "ClimateNexus"

A remarkably effective set of data from "Climate Nexus". Warming has not stopped and, yet, the "warming has stopped" meme remains alive and well. Another illustration of the fact that rational arguments just don't stick. Most people much prefer legends. And the warming continues......

Empire of illusion: virtualizing reality

"Empire of Illusions," by Chris Hedges, is a long screed about how virtual reality is trumping real reality and how, in the process, it is destroying the entity we call sometimes "civilization". Surely worth reading even though, I must confess, I found it a bit too disheartening for my taste. Out of this book, I would like to propose to you a citation that compares two dystrophies: Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984". Of the two, Huxley seems to have been the one who better understood the future that would become our present.

From "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman (1952) as cited in "Empire of Illusion", by Chris Hedges, p. 39"


"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy-porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions" in 1984, Huxley added, they are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. "

Hansen's dice are rolling

Image from ThreeOak



By Alexander Ac

In a changed world all weather events are created under different conditions than before the Industrial Revolution. A weather that is on steroids, we could say. Or, as climatologist James Hansen calls it, we are "loading the climate dice" towards more extreme climate and weather. Not surprisingly, it is increasingly harder and harder for more and more people to simply "adapt" to weather extremes. Just consider the weather reports from around the planet during the the last few days. They may not by unusual separately, but together they give a picture of quite rapidly destabilizing Holocene climate. The calendar summer of 2013 on the Nothern Hemisphere has just started!

Consider this:

• Arizona Governor declares a state of emergency in Yavapai County due to fast growing forest fire:

• Numerous wildfires are currently spreading also in Colorado and this state already contained its most destructive wildfire in history earlier this year, while the previous one occured in 2012.

• Fires are also raging in Alaska, which recently experienced record temperatures, while California is preparing for the worst fire season in at least 100 years.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

• Record pollution is choking Singapore as a result of forest fires in Indonesia:

• Canadian Alberta is suffering the worst floods in at least 90 years:

• Strong rains caused flash floods in parts of Southwestern France:

• Strong wind and gulf ball sized hail surprized Switzerland:

• Much needed monzoon rains came to India, unfortunataly more intense than usually, already killed about 1000 people and caused a lot of damage:

We really need to listen more carefully to what our planet is telling us. And act accordingly. Now.

(h/t to recent events goes to Fire Earth blog and Desdemona Despair blog)

*Correction: As pointed out by a reader, forest fires in Indonesia are primarily caused by human activity and might NOT necessarily be related to climate change. Even worse, they may have been intentionally started by palm oil companies to grow "biofuels", which are supposed to "offset" fossil fuel emissions. See the "moth effect".

Climate change: why people choose ignorance

Image above from Benvitalis' blog

Excerpt from Yahoo news, highlights by "The Frog"

Why Happy People Hide From Climate Change

Takepart.com – Wed, May 22, 2013

Ignorance may be bliss, but bliss also leads to ignorance—at least when it comes to climate change.

...

The study, published recently in the journal Science Communication, surveyed 736 undergraduate students. After asking them how they felt about the topic, the study then looked to see how likely they were to seek and gather more knowledge about it, said study author Janet Yang, a researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

...

Most people—51 percent—also say they don't think global warming is caused by people, or don't know, according to a Pew Research Center Survey. In other words, they do not know that manmade carbon dioxide is increasing worldwide temperatures, the conclusion reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The most surprising result to Yang was that she uncovered a social "norm" to engage in information avoidance—if a person thought their peers were more likely to avoid information on the topic, then they were more likely to avoid information on it as well. Typically, as is the case with other environmental issues, social norms—what you believe other people want you to do—lead people to seek more information, not less, Yang said.

"If you believe people think you should know more, you are more likely to seek out information," she said.

In this case, if a person spends time with others who avoid information about climate change, then they are more likely to do the same, she said.

The research suggests that when trying to inform people or get them to care about and do something regarding global warming, it may be useful to stir up some kind of emotional response.

"Stirring up emotion and using more visual story-telling—based on the study I think that'd be effective at getting people to seek more information," she said. "We need to deliver a sense of urgency that can effectively stimulate emotional responses to this issue among the audience," the authors continued in the paper.

It could also be useful to portray information-seeking as responsible and favorable. Furthermore, it's important that people understand that they can do something about it; those who thought their actions have no effect were more likely to avoid seeking information, Yang said.

"Risk communication about climate change might benefit from arousing a sense of curiosity or debunking false beliefs about current knowledge so that people are not complacent with what they already know," the authors wrote.

Yang said that she cares deeply about climate change, because it will have "a huge impact on our generation and future generations." When she confronts climate change deniers, she tries to convince them that it's a real problem, if she thinks it's appropriate. But if it's a casual or dinner conversation, "I don't always engage, because I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable," she said. "But perhaps I should."

The important thing is to do something

A post by Max Iacono, inspired by the post by Ugo Bardi on the meeting on climate change held in the town of Fiesole

by Max Iacono

A meeting such as the one whichtook place in Fiesole easily could be viewed as the first in a longer series of stakeholder meetings convened as part of a participatory local economic and social development program lasting several years.   Two “development” paradigms or models come to mind here.  One is “community development” and the other is “local economic development” or more generally “local development”.  “Local development” is a more encompassing term which can include local economic, social, political/ governance, cultural and environmental kinds of development; and an adequate local response to climate change can be viewed as engaging in a particular type of “local environmental development” program; in reality the various “dimensional” types of local development mentioned above all are inter-related and mutually supportive or constraining.

Without going further into the distinctions between community development and local economic or other kinds of local development each pursued in different ways  -since the international experience is wide and diverse- it is useful to note that often participatory local development initiatives begin with an assessment of the current situation in which the locality finds itself;  the local stakeholders look at both problems and opportunities which the community faces and then try to identify strategies and programs to self-develop the locality or community to which they belong.  If the meeting in Fiesole -or in the countless other localities throughout the world where it might have taken place- is viewed in this way, then the meeting might be seen as only the first in a series of many geared to assessing local problems and needs, developing strategies and then implementing an appropriate set of practical measures and actions. 

It is of course very difficult -in fact impossible- to know in advance what practical measures eventually should or could be implemented by local stakeholders at the community or local levels in the millions of communities and localities existing throughout the world  to mitigate against climate change and its many diverse effects in each particular place.   These measures by necessity will vary enormously from place to place and context to context.

One fairly obvious general effect of climate change however is that the weather is getting “wilder” in various ways.  So there are  -and there will continue to be- more droughts, more fires, more very heavy rainfall or snowfall, more floods, more hurricanes,  more tornados, and seasons that are ever more out of kilter -e.g. longer or shorter and more intense summers or winters- thereby also affecting agriculture in various and differing ways,  as well as plants, trees, animals, insects, pollinators, vector-borne diseases and etc.

It would seem that the first thing any community or locality would need or wish to do is to understand:  i) how exactly it is being affected already in some of the ways above or in other ways over any single calendar year period;  and ii) how  is it most likely going to be affected in let’s say another five years based on current trends in the worsening of climate change.  Since this is the most probable scenario because parts per million of CO2 continue to increase by about 3 ppm per year and increasing quantities of methane also are being released and more ice melt also is occurring.   But it also can be useful to look at the history of severe weather events in the locality and around its general area over the past 50 to 100 years, if it is available.   This is because a flood that before might have occurred only once in every 100 years now might occur on average once per decade.  

Once this first general assessment is done it will be easier for local stakeholders to discuss sensibly what might be done and what could be planned and done by the local community,  or by the province or the region or the country within which it is set. 

The other aspect which I think any local stakeholders probably need to understand is the difference between various kinds of actions and measures which are possible and namely those which belong in four categories:  i) prevention ii) mitigation iii) adaptation and iv) reversal.  Measures implemented in one category may have effects in some of the other categories too but generally speaking there are different measures for different objectives.

 

For instance although Fiesole may wish to focus on preparing better for any fires which may occur, nothing prevents its residents from also being aware of what is involved in the Keystone pipeline decision in the United States which will affect prevention probably more than any other single development at this time. And although I wouldn’t necessarily advocate it because I think it would be mostly ineffective, they also could write a letter about it to president Obama so that he at least might know that people all over the world are watching what he does or fails to do.  Doing something about preparing for fires  (mitigation locally) while writing such a letter (prevention internationally) would help to synergize and further activate the concern and action for climate change by those involved.  The important thing is to actually do something and to remember that it is mostly by doing –and often by trial and error- that we learn ever more about what to do and how to do it and develop further both our capacities and our confidence and motivation for taking further action.

Ian Dunlop: an emergency war footing action against climate change

Ian Dunlop, is an energy expert, director of "Australia 21," member of the Club of Rome, and more. On climate change, he is an extremely effective speaker who doesn't do any pill sugaring; as you can see in the video above. The slides he presents are also avaliable on-line. From this set of slides, here is the conclusion:

The climate & energy challenge is far greater & more urgent than is acknowledged officially

“Official” solutions, and current processes, are not working and will not deliver the required transformation either to the extent, or in the time, required.

Market forces will not deliver without fundamental regulatory change.

If we are serious about avoiding catastrophic outcomes, emergency “war-footing” action is essential


“It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best’, we have to do what is required.” 

Winston Churchill

400 ppm: time for a communication tipping point

Image from Celsias

The round number of 400 ppm of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has no special physical significance. The dreaded atmospheric "tipping point" that will lead us to climate catastrophe could have been passed already, or perhaps it could be somewhere at a higher concentration that we'll reach in the future.

But 400 ppm could herald a different tipping point - one that has to do with the perception of the urgency of the climate problem. A communication tipping point.

Perhaps, the low point in climate consciousness was reached last year, when the US presidential elections went through without climate change even being mentioned in the debate. Think about that: is there any way to sink deeper than that? But things are changing. The writing is on the wall: the Web is bubbling up with sites, blogs, forums, videos. There is a general understanding that if we still have a chance to avoid disaster, we must catch it now. Even the blog you are reading, "the frog that jumped out" is a result of this new perception. And that's going to have effects.

The "communication sphere" is a complex system that is subjected to tipping points just as many physical systems. So far, it has remained precariously balanced on a situation where organized denial has been able to block the consciousness of the danger we face from diffusing in the communication space. But, if we reach the tipping point, the communication system will undergo a transition that will change everything. It will bring back the climate problem to its rightful place in the list of priorities we have: the most worrisome, dangerous, terrible threat that humankind has ever faced in historical times. The number "400" could be the mark of this communication tipping point.

Recognizing that a problem exists is the first step to solving it. A small push in the right direction may be just what we need to pass to the next stage. So, let's all push together!

Communicating climate change: may the force be against you!

Yoda's three fingered force push - from Star Wars.

Don't you have the impression, sometimes, that the force is against you? Every time you try  to say something about the dangers of climate change, you see people literally being pushed away from you by an invisible force. It feels like being Star War's Yoda, pushing away enemies with "the force".

The problem is known, although not often referred to in these terms. Here is what Peter Sandman, specialist in the field of risk management, has to say on this issue:

When somebody says something that people don’t want to hear – and certainly don’t want to have to think about or acknowledge – they sometimes self-mockingly stick their fingers in their ears and sing, “La-la-la-la-la.” This is a very literal representation of the essence of denial.

Sandman also adds an example:

.....for many women in the developed world, the main problem is denial. Far from being apathetic about breast cancer, many women are terrified about it. In order to avoid intolerable fear, they must avoid thinking about breast cancer; in order to avoid thinking about breast cancer, they must avoid checking for lumps.

Sounds familiar, right? It is the essence of the problem we face with communicating climate change. People react with denial. Some of them simply don't want to hear about climate (it is the "Yoda push" effect) - others react becoming the "aggressive denier" characters who infest blog comments and discussion forums. But people in denial of climate change are not evil; they are not on the payroll of the fossil fuel lobby. They are showing a perfectly human reaction to a frightening situation.

How do we overcome this reaction? Not easy, but not impossible, either. Let me cite again from Peter Sandman:

In our 2003 column on “Fear of Fear,” Jody Lanard and I offered a list of strategies. Among the important ones:

• Give people things to do.
• Give people choices among things to do – that is, things to decide.
• Encourage love, camaraderie, and community involvement. People can tolerate more fear when they’re protecting others they care about.
• Encourage anger (where appropriate). People can tolerate more fear when they’re fighting back.
• Be a role model – show that you are bearing your own fear.

Then we wrote:

Most importantly, treat other people’s fear as legitimate…. “It’s natural to be afraid, I’m afraid too” is a much more empathic response to public fear than “there’s nothing to be afraid of.” If we want people to bear their fear, we must assure them that their fear is appropriate.

So, we should not "sugar the pill" nor we should try to scare people. Truth is the way to go. The key point is to give people a way to fight back.

Of course, there is much more to say on this issue, but this post should give you some idea of how "risk management" of climate change can be approached in a professional way. Give a look to Sandman's paper, which is a mine of ideas and revelations. Then, your comments are welcome.


____________________________________

For a moment of relax, if you can understand Italian (actually, a peculiar version of Italian as spoken in towns along the Tuscan coast) you can see Yoda's force push in action in this clip.

Welcome to the boiling frog blog

This is a blog dedicated to communication in climate change. 

We are a group of concerned people who believe that the science of climate may not be completely settled, but that the risks involved with climate change are clear enough. It is time to act.

Acting on climate is no trivial matter: humankind is facing a tremendous barrier made of apathy, ignorance and fear that, so far, has blocked or slowed down action. So, our first objective as human beings is of communicating the urgency of the situation. Only after we have reached a global consensus that climate change is a priority issue, it will be possible to act on it effectively.

So, far, the task of communicating the climate problem has not been successful because most concerned people are not trained in the art and the science of communication. That has resulted in an incredible number of mistakes which often have backfired. We need to do way better.

This is what we want to discuss in this blog. We need to learn how to communicate. It means to learn how to tell the truth on climate in a way that doesn't scare people  but, on the contrary, stimulates them to action. It is possible, but we need to do it right.

We chose the image of the boiling frog as a reminder of the human situation on planet Earth. We hope it is to be intended as meaning that we are (or should be) more intelligent than frogs. We can still jump out!