Communicating climate change

Does it take the tragedy of a catastrophe to make people think about climate change? Some say that the devastation and suffering caused by hurricane Katrina or the bushfires in Australia are the necessary link to raise awareness. But scientists are reluctant to blame climate change for a single event when there may be other causes. So how can we bridge this gap to long-term thinking?

Climate change can appear a distant, long-term problem, so how we communicate its impacts is crucial if we want to galvanise people into action. Some of the experts we spoke to as part of our Climate Futures project argued that highlighting the devastating role of extreme events is the only way to get people to sit up and pay attention.

But scientists are rightly cautious about linking individual events to a long-term trend that has complex variations. No single flood or hurricane can be definitively “blamed” on climate change. And the human tragedies behind these events should give extra cause for caution in how we talk about them.

This week, the Head of Climate Change at the Met Office, Dr Vicky Pope, slammed the “distortion of science” over recent Arctic sea melt measurements and said she felt frustrated at having to “rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme [event] is all due to climate change”.

The big irony is that this month, politicians in Australia have taken the rare step of making a cautious link between the worst bushfires in over a century and climate change. Penny Wong, the Climate Change Minister, chose her words very carefully: temperature changes were “consistent with what scientists told us would happen”. Several major media outlets then reported this crucial link.

In Australia, high temperatures and prolonged drought caused an imbalance that meant the bushfires were particularly devastating. The point here is not whether we can link these directly toclimate change, but that it demonstrates the massive potential for climatic imbalances to disrupt lives. Given that all serious scientists forecast these “extreme” events will increase, it is critical to make the point that this fits within the pattern they predict.

And an increase in public awareness is urgently needed. Even though 80% of UK adults now say they are “very” or “fairly” concerned about climate change, politicians still seem to think this isn’t a mandate to get on with it. Ed Miliband, the UK’s Climate Change Minister, recently suggested that “popular mobilisation” was a prerequisite for action and a global agreement at Copenhagen later this year.

So we’re faced with a conundrum: we need to massively raise awareness, but individual events can’t be linked to the long-term trend that’s unfolding before our eyes. Whilst sensationalism and apocalyptic visions turn people off, passing on the opportunity to make any link could also be counter-productive.

When a clear pattern is emerging, we need to take the lead from Penny Wong and accurately explain it loudly and clearly to the public. The task ahead is to find a new language that balances the needs for scientific rigour, sensitivity to human suffering and the need to urgently communicate the challenge ahead.