Science of Science Communication 2.0, Session 7.1: communicating climate science part 2

It's that again! Another session -- # 7 --of virtual "Science of Science Communication 2.0"

Reading list here. 

Imagine you were

1. President Obama about to make a speech to the Nation in support of your proposal for a carbon tax; 
2. a zoning board member in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, preparing to give a presentation at an open meeting (at which members of the public would be briefed and then allowed to give comments) defending a proposed set of guidelines on climate-impact “vulnerability reduction measures for all new construction, redevelopment and infrastructure such as additional hardening, higher floor elevations or incorporation of natural infrastructure for increased resilience”; 
3. a climate scientist invited to give a lecture on climate change to the local chapter of the Kiwanis in Springfield, Tennessee; or 
4. a “communications consultant” hired by a billionaire, to create a television advertisement, to be run during the Superbowl, that will promote constructive public engagement with the science on and issues posed by climate change.

Would the CRED manual be useful to you? Would the studies conducted by Feygina, et al., Meyers et al., or Kahan et al. be?  How would you advise any one of these actors to proceed?

Update on Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 11:53AM by Dan Kahan

Note: Because I have posted a portion of Tamar Wilner's blog post (and linked to remainder) in a separate entry, I'm closing off comments here & urging everyone to post comments there after reading both Tamar's & Kevin Tobia's very insightful reflections.

Comments

[Tamar Wilner]

I'll do a TLDR version of my thoughts here.

Full response on my blog.

Note: I have some serious reservations about a lot of the CRED advice, so I'm not recommending that for any of the speakers. (More in the blog post linked above.)

Now, on to the assignment.

President Obama:

Some of the study results suggest Obama should modify his message to appeal to voters not already on his side.

Meyers’ work suggests President Obama could try to emphasize the public health benefits of his proposal, and the administration already seems to have got the memo on that. Obama should not, however, use a national security angle, which is likely to anger those most skeptical about anthropogenic climate change. Feygina’s work suggests that additionally, Obama could talk about his proposal as a means of protecting the “American way of life,” i.e. the status quo. Obama could try reframing the proposal as a form of system maintenance rather than radical change – perhaps he could talk about his proposal as a natural extension of the previous cap and trade system introduced by a Republican president. Not surprisingly, Obama has tried this too, although perhaps he hasn’t stressed the point enough.

Kahan’s findings could be applicable on a broad scale – not to suggest that Obama should speak about geoengineering specifcally, since that’s not his policy aim; but that part of his reframing effort could include talk of human ingenuity. Once again, I think this has been tried, in the context of renewable technologies.

By his very role, and by public perceptions, Obama is rather hamstrung. He can’t really de-politicize his message. Feygina’s study notes (the abstract is actually a bit misleading on this point) that system justification did not fully account for political orientation’s effect on environmental attitudes, and suggests that “top down” factors such as official party platforms are also at work. There’s also the possibility that when Obama engages in re-framing (such as talking about making the US more secure, by reducing dependence on foreign oil), this is seen by conservative voters as a transparent ploy. Myers notes that important factors in real world communication, not reflected in her experiment, include the congruence between messenger and frame.

Zoning board member:

The key for this official is that he doesn’t really have to mention “climate change” at all. I’m not suggesting that he suppress such talk, but it’s really not necessary to get the adaptation measures passed. The term “climate change” is inherently polarizing, and people can recognize the need to protect infrastructure from storms with or without a belief in man-made global warming.

Myers’ study suggests it may be useful for the board member to use a public health frame for the discussion, which would be natural when one is talking about the need to safeguard against flooding, etc. Feygina’s recommendations would also be easy to accommodate, as climate change adaptation on a broad scale involves protecting the “status quo” (ie, protecting the city against the forces of nature), although property owners and politicians may in reality have to start doing things very differently. It proabbly wouldn’t hurt to emphasize the human ingenuity and industry aspects of the officials’ approach, but this may not strictly be necessary as without talk of “climate change,” there may not be polarizing language in need of neutralization.

Scientist:

Kiwanis International is a service club that emphasizes efforts to improve children’s lives. Feygina’s recommendations may or may not be necessary here, depending on the system-protection beliefs of the participants – but putting them into practice probably wouldn’t hurt. Myers’ work would point towards using a health frame here, perhaps focusing on preserving environmental quality to reduce childhood asthma, etc., and I see little drawback to doing so. Kahan’s work suggests that making reference to human ingenuity could help to neutralize some of the polarization that talk of climate would have on the more hiearchical/individualist members of the organization, though I have concerns about over-emphasis on geoengineering, as discussed in my blog post.

Superbowl ad consultant:

Feygina’s work would be useful because the ad must appeal to a broad spectrum of Americans, including those averse to changing the status quo. Again I see health framing as useful and don’t see any obvious drawbacks to such an approach; likewise an emphasis on human ingenuity. My concerns about geoengineering (see blog post) are even stronger for the ad than for a one-off talk at a Kiwanis club, since the message would reach many millions of people and be repeated often, thereby completely exaggerating the importance of geoengineering within the range of climate change approaches.