The Power of Narrative

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul P. Lejano ◽  
Shondel J. Nero
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Genetic Code ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Climate Change Science ◽  
Over Time

Narrative is the stuff of community. The Power of Narrative embarks on a quest to understand how narrative works in taking an inchoate group of individuals and turning it into a powerful social movement. To understand the force of narrative, the authors examine the particular phenomenon of climate skepticism. Somehow, the narrative of climate skepticism has been able to forge a movement and stake a challenge to the hegemony of the larger community of scientists on what is ostensibly a matter of science. The book asks: How is this achieved? What is the narrative of climate skepticism, and how has it evolved over time and diffused from place to place? Is it possible that this narrative shares with other issue narratives an underlying genetic code of sorts, a story that is more fundamental than all of these? How has the climate skeptical narrative contended with its other, which is the narrative-network of climate change science, and forged its own social movement? The outcome of this struggle between climate science and its denial has implications for society that go far beyond climatology. Using narrative and discourse analysis, the authors demonstrate how the narrative lens allows us unique insights into these questions. The book takes the reader on a journey, across times and places and social realms; throughout, we see the power of narrative at work, making believers, or skeptics, of us all.

scholarly journals Telling the boiling frog what he needs to know: why climate change risks should be plotted as probability over time

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Change Risks ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Humanity's situation with respect to climate change is sometimes compared to that of a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, meaning that change will happen too gradually for us to appreciate the likelihood of catastrophe and act before it is too late. I argue that the scientific community is not yet telling the boiling frog what he needs to know. I use a review of the figures included in two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show that much of the climate science communicated to policymakers is presented in the form of projections of what is most likely to occur, as a function of time (equivalent to the following statement: in 5 min time, the water you are sitting in will be 2 ∘C warmer). I argue from first principles that a more appropriate means of assessing and communicating the risks of climate change would be to produce assessments of the likelihood of crossing non-arbitrary thresholds of impact, as a function of time (equivalent to the following statement: the probability of you being boiled to death will be 1 % in 5 min time, rising to 100 % in 20 min time if you do not jump out of the pot). This would be consistent with approaches to risk assessment in fields such as insurance, engineering, and health and safety. Importantly, it would ensure that decision makers are informed of the biggest risks and hence of the strongest reasons to act. I suggest ways in which the science community could contribute to promoting this approach, taking into account its inherent need for cross-disciplinary research and for engagement with decision makers before the research is conducted instead of afterwards.

Skeptics without Borders

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-94
Author(s):  
Raul P. Lejano ◽  
Shondel J. Nero ◽  
Michael Chua
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Public ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Climate Change Science ◽  
Historical Examination

Chapter 4 employs a comparative lens to show how the climate skeptical norm transformed to fit the social-economic conditions, cultures, and institutional settings of each context as it diffused from place to place. It highlights how in the United Kingdom people may dispute climate change science while remaining open to the possibility that mean global temperatures are rising, while elsewhere climate skepticism seems to merge with a broader sentiment of mistrust. Using narrative analysis, this chapter underscores the point that climate skeptical narratives are not homogeneous. The focus is not a historical examination of the narrative but a cross-sectional, or synchronic, one—commonalities and contrasts among climate skeptical narratives as popularly espoused in different countries occurring simultaneously. The chapter examines how differences in climate skeptical narratives from country to country can provide insights into how and why climate skepticism has resonated among the public in each place.

scholarly journals Climate change—that is not real! A comparative analysis of climate-sceptic think tanks in the USA and Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 164 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Busch ◽  
Lena Judick
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Climate Change Denial ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Policy And Science ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe science is clear: climate change is real. In 2015, 195 countries adopted the global climate deal in Paris. Nonetheless, numerous well-organized conservative think tanks (CTTs) deny that climate change is happening. We ask what kind of counterclaims are used by climate-sceptic CTTs and to what extent these counterclaims change over time. We analyse about 2500 blog articles from prominent CTTs in the USA and Germany between 2008 and 2016. Our results show that sceptical arguments about climate policy and science dominate the countermovement. At the same time, we detect that the prevalence of counterclaims is CTT-specific and that US think tanks show a greater variability compared to their German counterparts. In a surprising outcome, we find that the Paris Agreement did not affect the climate denial movement. Based on these insights, we discuss our contributions to social movement research in the climate change denial context and derive conclusions for pro-climate campaigns.

scholarly journals Stand out of my Sunlight: The Mediating Role of Climate Change Conspiracy Beliefs in the Relationship between National Collective Narcissism and Acceptance of Climate Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bertin ◽  
Kenzo Nera ◽  
Katarzyna Hamer ◽  
Isabella Uhl-Haedicke ◽  
Sylvain Delouvée
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Negative Relation ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
The Relationship

Despite the scientific consensus about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there are still obstacles hindering society from acknowledging the severity of the situation. Notably, previous research suggests that climate change threats can cause people to display ethnocentric reaction to preserve the ingroup’s interests. In this research, we investigate the relation between collective narcissism and attitudes towards climate science. We argue that national collective narcissism is negatively associated with the acceptance of climate science. We further hypothesized that this relation might be mediated by conspiracy beliefs about climate change, because narcissistic identifiers are prone to hold conspiracy beliefs. In a pilot Study (N = 409), we found that national collective narcissism was significantly associated with climate change conspiracy beliefs. In Study 1 (N = 295), climate change conspiracy beliefs mediated the negative relation between national collective narcissism and acceptance of climate science. In Study 2 (N = 375), this mediation was replicated when controlling for other forms of climate skepticism. Lastly, general conspiracy mentality did not mediate this relation, which emphasizes the importance of considering the specificity of climate change conspiracy theories (rather than generic propensity to believe in conspiracy theories) in understanding distrust toward climate science.

Anglo Fears

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Jacques
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Theoretical Possibility ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Change Science ◽  
Warming World

The rejection of climate change science is organized by a countermovement, a collective effort to oppose a threatening social movement, in this case global environmentalism along with climate mitigation efforts. This chapter shows that, from a comparative perspective, the Anglo group of countries are quite alone in organizing the Climate Change Countermovement (CCCM), even though climate denial manifests in an unorganized way more broadly. This chapter offers the theoretical possibility that this Anglo climate denial emerges as a defense of imperial privilege threatened by the social change required to address a warming world. The theory is then supported by selections from authors of books who reject climate change and that evidence a fear of loss—of US power, of possessive individualism, and of Western progress.

scholarly journals Climate for women in climate science: Women scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (9) ◽  
pp. 2060-2065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Gay-Antaki ◽  
Diana Liverman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Women Scientists ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Community Benefits ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Global North ◽  
Disciplinary Affiliation ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Over Time

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an authoritative and influential source of reports on climate change. The lead authors of IPCC reports include scientists from around the world, but questions have been raised about the dominance of specific disciplines in the report and the disproportionate number of scholars from the Global North. In this paper, we analyze the as-yet-unexamined issue of gender and IPCC authorship, looking at changes in gender balance over time and analyzing women’s views about their experience and barriers to full participation, not only as women but also at the intersection of nationality, race, command of English, and discipline. Over time, we show that the proportion of female IPCC authors has seen a modest increase from less than 5% in 1990 to more than 20% in the most recent assessment reports. Based on responses from over 100 women IPCC authors, we find that many women report a positive experience in the way in which they are treated and in their ability to influence the report, although others report that some women were poorly represented and heard. We suggest that an intersectional lens is important: not all women experience the same obstacles: they face multiple and diverse barriers associated with social identifiers such as race, nationality, command of English, and disciplinary affiliation. The scientific community benefits from including all scientists, including women and those from the Global South. This paper documents barriers to participation and identifies opportunities to diversify climate science.

scholarly journals Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
John Cook ◽  
Klaus Oberauer ◽  
Scott Brophy ◽  
Elisabeth A. Lloyd ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Blind Test ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Growing Body

A growing body of evidence has implicated conspiracist ideation in the rejection of scientific propositions. Internet blogs in particular have become the staging ground for conspiracy theories that challenge the link between HIV and AIDS, the benefits of vaccinations, or the reality of climate change. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS. That article stimulated considerable discursive activity in the climate blogosphere—i.e., the numerous blogs dedicated to climate “skepticism”—that was critical of the study. The blogosphere discourse was ideally suited for analysis because its focus was clearly circumscribed, it had a well-defined onset, and it largely discontinued after several months. We identify and classify the hypotheses that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions using well-established criteria for conspiracist ideation. In two behavioral studies involving naive participants we show that those criteria and classifications were reconstructed in a blind test. Our findings extend a growing body of literature that has examined the important, but not always constructive, role of the blogosphere in public and scientific discourse.

The Social Construction of Climate Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Raul P. Lejano ◽  
Shondel J. Nero ◽  
Michael Chua
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Negative Feedback ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Global South ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ideological Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Change Science ◽  
Constructive Engagement

Chapter 6 shows how in constructing, with some success, a challenge to the narrative of climate change science, the skeptical narrative has increasingly taken on features of ideology. A similar phenomenon may also be happening among the ranks of climate change advocates, with the response to skeptics taking on elements of ideological talk. Reactions to a prominent climate skeptic are examined in the chapter, along with characteristics of climate scientists’ responses to the skeptics. The chapter asks if this a pattern of negative feedback, with ideological discourse on one side eliciting a similarly ideological counter-reaction from the other, and suggests that if this is so, it does not bode well for the idea that constructive engagement of contending publics is still possible. Any way out of this impasse will require an openness on the part of the climate scientific majority to the interests and concerns of a skeptical public. Most fundamentally, the chapter shows, there is something about much climate change discourse that is modernist, exhibiting cultural biases that can alienate the other (e.g., the global South).

Explaining Variation in Transnational Climate Change Activism: The Role of Inter-Movement Spillover

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hadden
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Global Justice Movement ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Over Time

How can we explain variation in the volume and character of transnational collective action on climate change? This paper presents original qualitative and quantitative data to document how transnational activism on climate change has changed over time. The author draws attention to the role of transnational social movement spillover—a process by which ideas, activists, and tactics are diffused from one movement to another—in explaining this evolution. The article examines the spillover of the global justice movement to the climate justice movement from 2007 to 2009, linking this spillover to changes in the nature of activism. In contrast to previous approaches, this work shows that transnational social movement spillover can result in the expansion of contention without radicalizing those actors already involved. This case demonstrates the theoretical importance of the spillover process and offers lessons for future climate activism.

scholarly journals Leveraging cognitive consistency to nudge conservative climate change beliefs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Gehlbach ◽  
Carly D Robinson ◽  
Christine Vriesema
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Cognitive Consistency ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Change Beliefs ◽  
Political Divide

People feel motivated to maintain consistency across many domains in life. When it comes to climate change, many find themselves motivated to maintain consistency with others, e.g., by doubting climate change to cohere with friends’ and neighbors’ beliefs. The resulting climate skepticism has derailed discussions to address the issue collectively in the United States. To counteract these social consistency pressures, we developed a cognitive consistency intervention for climate skeptics. We first demonstrated that most people share substantial faith in a variety of scientific findings, across disciplines ranging from medicine to astronomy. Next, we show that conservative participants who first acknowledge several general contributions of science subsequently report significantly stronger beliefs in climate science (as compared to conservatives who are asked only about their climate science beliefs). These findings provide an encouraging proof-of-concept for how an inclusive climate conversation might be initiated across the political divide.

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