Day 75: “Framing Science” (or how to talk about climate change)
The economy isn't the only subect that gets politically framed; science suffers from a similarly deep divide.
As a newcomer to the blogosphere in recent months, I’ve stumbled on a few really innovative sites. One of the first was “Framing Science,” a blog at scienceblogs.com authored by Matthew Nisbet. Nisbet is a communications professor at American University, and he’s churning out some incredibly helpful ideas.
I love the blog — and Nisbet’s ideas — because they’re providing a solution to a nasty roadblock that I’ve felt both professionally and personally. “Framing Science” simply means talking about science, in a way that unites people on thorny issues like climate change rather than sending them screaming to their respective ideological bunkers. His ideas are helping me think about how I write about climate change, being mindful to avoid the kinds of contexts that will turn partisan readers away. Because of ideas like Nisbet’s, I find that I’m even doing a better job of communicating about science and environmentalism with my right-leaning, evangelical neighbors (and a few family members) here in the Bible Belt. And that feels important.
So when NASA sent out a press release adverstising a chance to hear Nisbet in a teleconference, it went straight on my calendar. The talk was at noon today, out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The rest of the post is a report on the highlights, with one caveat: for a professional communicator, Nisbet speaks awfully quickly! I may have missed a few points …
In his introduction, Nisbet pointed out that “major barriers” exist to engaging the public on the science of climate change.
Part of the problem lies in an underlying assumption science communicators make: most believe that if the public better understands the science, they’ll understand the urgency of climate change.
Not so, Nisbet thinks.
Science is like any other subject, he says. People don’t have the time or the motivation to dig in. Instead, “on a daily basis, faced with a torrent of information, people readily rely on shortcuts, often in the absence of full understanding or even complete knowledge.”
And what are the shortcuts people use to understand complex science? Their personal backgrounds, ideology and religions, among other filters.
Climate change is one of the best examples.
Nisbet referred to ‘the two Americas’ of global warming perceptions: “Twenty-three percent of college-educated Republicans accept global warming, as opposed to 75 percent of college-educated Democrats,” he said. “Cimate change may have joined abortion and gun control as part of what it means to be a Democrat or Republican.”
Consenus on the issue seems to have suffered from distortion — an unethical version of “framing” — on both sides.
The left presented the issue through a “catastrophe frame,” Nisbet said.
“Invonvenient Truth was marketed as ‘the scariest movie you’ll ever see,’” he pointed out. “This is similar to using a fear appeal in health communication. People either dismiss the fear appeal or it lends itself to a sense of fatalism; they don’t know what to do about that risk.”
As for the right, that side has couched climate change in the “scientific uncertainty frame” with a follow-up frame, the “emotional home run” of the “economic competitiveness frame,” meaning if America acts to resolve climate change, it could put us at a competitive disadvantage alongside countries who don’t.
Neither frame — the left’s or the right’s — is fair, and it’s time to break the gridlock, Nisbet is saying. He thinks the key to consensus is common ground, and he pointed out three new frames that appear to be working to dissolve the impasse.
He noted that the famous scientist E.O. Wilson and evangelical leaders alike have been pointing out a moral duty to communicate why climate change matters. Christian leaders are realizing that followers must care about climate change because disrespecting God’s world is an affront to God, and counters the Golden Rule.
He said rather than being a hindrance to economic progress, it’s important to point out that climate change solutions are a way to re-grow the economy.
“Energy technology could be the foundation for a second American industrial revolution,” he said, possibly referring to earlier remarks by Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Finally, he said, emphasizing the public health implications of climate change is important, so we can “shift perception of impacts away from polar regions toward urban cities, and the face of climate change away from animals to humans. We should take action on climate change because it’s a matter of protecting health and human well-being.”
If you want to read more, Nisbet’s talk relates to a piece he wrote for the March-April issue of Environment.
