scholarly journals Discouraging climate action through implicit argumentation: An analysis of linguistic polyphony in the Summary for Policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132110265
Author(s):  
Julia Kanerva ◽  
Attila Krizsán
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Assessment Report ◽  
Climate Action

In this paper, we study on the ways the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) communicates scientific knowledge on climate change to policymakers in the Summary for Policymakers of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5); the most recent Assessment Report issued by the IPCC. We investigate implicit argumentation with a special focus on the ways the summary may direct the orientation of the discourse towards the evasion of climate action while appearing to be pro-action on the surface. The results of a systematic analysis of polyphonic constructions in the language of the text indicate that implicit argumentation represents climate action inevitably subordinate to economic goals. In a number of constructions, the discourse reconstructs pro-economic-growth-based frames in contrast to prioritising environmental values when encouraging political action in the context of climate change. Through such language use, the discourses mediated by an institution of such high societal importance and authority as the IPCC arguably have a considerable impact in maintaining conservative climate policies and delaying, even hindering, a transition into a carbon-neutral society. Thus, we conclude that even the most authoritative climate-science-policy institutions should reconsider their use of linguistic representations in terms of implicit argumentation in their communication in order to encourage climate action in a more straightforward manner. As long as the most authoritative actors in science-policy discourse on climate change continue to reinforce cognitive frames evading urgent action to mitigate climate change, it is questionable whether we can expect the policymakers to have the courage to take ambitious action even if the figures in the natural-scientific evidence sections of the reports were demonstrating clear worsening trends.

scholarly journals Awareness of Both Type 1 and 2 Errors in Climate Science and Assessment

2014 ◽  
Vol 95 (9) ◽  
pp. 1445-1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. L. Anderegg ◽  
Elizabeth S. Callaway ◽  
Maxwell T. Boykoff ◽  
Gary Yohe ◽  
Terr y L. Root
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
False Negative ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Assessment Report ◽  
Fourth Assessment Report ◽  
Error Avoidance

Treatment of error and uncertainty is an essential component of science and is crucial in policy-relevant disciplines, such as climate science. We posit here that awareness of both “false positive” and “false negative” errors is particularly critical in climate science and assessments, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientific and assessment practices likely focus more attention to avoiding false positives, which could lead to higher prevalence of false-negative errors. We explore here the treatment of error avoidance in two prominent case studies regarding sea level rise and Himalayan glacier melt as presented in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While different decision rules are necessarily appropriate for different circumstances, we highlight that false-negative errors also have consequences, including impaired communication of the risks of climate change. We present recommendations for better accounting for both types of errors in the scientific process and scientific assessments.

scholarly journals Key messages from the IPCC AR6 climate science report

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Ming ◽  
Isobel Rowell ◽  
Sam Lewin ◽  
Robert Rouse ◽  
Thomas Aubry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Assessment Report ◽  
Briefing Document ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Climate Crisis

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published the first part of its sixth assessment report (AR6) which summarises the latest climate science findings and will guide policy in the years ahead. This report is particularly timely, as world leaders prepare to respond to the climate crisis at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this November. The full AR6 report is an enormous scientific undertaking that assesses the physical science basis for climate change and assembles the findings from over 14,000 peer reviewed publications. The purpose of this briefing document is to provide a succinct summary of the key scientific messages.

Is the Great Barrier Reef dead? Satire, death and environmental communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110558
Author(s):  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton ◽  
Claire Konkes
Keyword(s):  
Great Barrier Reef ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Communication ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Barrier Reef ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Us ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
A Site

An obituary for the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) by travel and food writer Rowan Jacobsen (2016) commemorated its ‘lifetime accomplishments’ in Outside, the US outdoor recreational magazine. ‘News’ of the Reef's demise went viral and the economic and political furore that followed was immense. Tourism industries, especially reliant on international arrivals, were impacted as potential visitors accepted the Reef's passing as fact. Politicians scampered to reassure Australians and the globe that the Reef was indeed still alive and beautiful. In the Australian public sphere, climate science deniers, alongside those advocating for climate action, collided over the impacts of global warming to Reef health. Subsequent mass coral bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020 sustained at the very least, the idea that the Reef was, or was soon to be, dead. Our paper follows the idea of a ‘dead Reef’ in the context of historical and recent debates about Reef protection. Using Google Trends, we identify Jacobsen's article as the source of increased Australian and global ideation of a ‘dead Reef’. As a site of local and global environmental communication – where human relations to nature are expressed and understood - the Reef holds extraordinary story telling power. At the current junction then, the way we communicate the Reef is critical to public understanding and political action on climate change. We conclude Jacobsen's article is an example of the problems of satirical communication, serving to amplify existing conflicts and undermine efforts to foster to climate action.

One Atmosphere

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Singer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Montreal Protocol ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Protective Shield ◽  
Third Assessment Report ◽  
The Developed Countries ◽  
Full Force

There can be no clearer illustration of the need for human beings to act globally than the issues raised by the impact of human activity on our atmosphere. That we all share the same planet came to our attention in a particularly pressing way in the 1970s when scientists discovered that the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) threatens the ozone layer shielding the surface of our planet from the full force of the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Damage to that protective shield would cause cancer rates to rise sharply and could have other effects, for example, on the growth of algae. The threat was especially acute to the world's southernmost cities, since a large hole in the ozone was found to be opening up each year over Antarctica, but in the long term, the entire ozone shield was imperiled. Once the science was accepted, concerted international action followed relatively rapidly with the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1985. The developed countries phased out virtually all use of CFCs by 1999, and the developing countries, given a 10-year period of grace, are now moving toward the same goal. Getting rid of CFCs has turned out to be just the curtain raiser: the main event is climate change, or global warming. Without belittling the pioneering achievement of those who brought about the Montreal Protocol, the problem was not so difficult, for CFCs can be replaced in all their uses at relatively little cost, and the solution to the problem is simply to stop producing them. Climate change is a very different matter. The scientific evidence that human activities are changing the climate of our planet has been studied by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body intended to provide policy makers with an authoritative view of climate change and its causes. The group released its Third Assessment Report in 2001, building on earlier reports and incorporating new evidence accumulated over the previous five years. The report is the work of 122 lead authors and 515 contributing authors, and the research on which it was based was reviewed by 337 experts.

Introduction

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Orr
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Assessment Report ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Trauma ◽  
E Mail

In our final hour (2003), cambridge university astronomer Martin Rees concluded that the odds of global civilization surviving to the year 2100 are no better than one in two. His assessment of threats to humankind ranging from climate change to a collision of Earth with an asteroid received good reviews in the science press, but not a peep from any political leader and scant notice from the media. Compare that nonresponse to a hypothetical story reporting, say, that the president had had an affair. The blow-dried electronic pundits, along with politicians of all kinds, would have spared no effort to expose and analyze the situation down to parts per million. But Rees’s was only one of many credible and well-documented warnings from scientists going back decades, including the Fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007). All were greeted with varying levels of denial, indifference, and misinterpretation, or were simply ignored altogether. It is said to be a crime to cause panic in a crowded theater by yelling “fire” without cause, but is it less criminal not to warn people when the theater is indeed burning? My starting point is the oddly tepid response by U.S. leaders at virtually all levels to global warming, more accurately described as “global destabilization.” I will be as optimistic as a careful reading of the evidence permits and assume that leaders will rouse themselves to act in time to stabilize and then reduce concentrations of greenhouse gases below the level at which we lose control of the climate altogether by the effects of what scientists call “positive carbon cycle feedbacks.” Even so, with a warming approaching or above 2°C we will not escape severe social, economic, and political trauma. In an e-mail to the author on November 19, 2007, ecologist and founder of the Woods Hole Research Center George Woodwell puts it this way: . . . There is an unfortunate fiction abroad that if we can hold the temperature rise to 2 or 3 degrees C we can accommodate the changes. The proposition is the worst of wishful thinking.

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.

Communicating About Climate Change with Journalists and Media Producers

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wihbey ◽  
Bud Ward
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
News Media ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology ◽  
Climate Change Communication ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Change Communication ◽  
The University

The relationship between scientific experts and news media producers around issues of climate change has been a complicated and often contentious one, as the slow-moving and complex story has frequently challenged, and clashed with, journalistic norms of newsworthiness, speed, and narrative compression. Even as climate scientists have become more concerned by their evidence-based findings involving projected risks, doubts and confusion over communications addressing those risks have increased. Scientists increasingly have been called upon to speak more clearly and forcefully to the public through news media about evidence and risks—and to do so in the face of rapidly changing news media norms that only complicate those communications. Professional science and environment journalists—whose ranks have been thinned steadily by media industry financial pressures—have meanwhile come under more scrutiny in terms of their understanding; accuracy; and, at times, perceived bias. A number of important organizations have recognized the need to educate and empower a broad range of scientists and journalists to be more effective at communicating about the complexities of climate science and about the societal and economic impacts of a warming climate. For example, organizations such as Climate Communication have been launched to support scientists in their dealings with media, while the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself has continued to focus on the communication of climate science. The Earth Journalism Network, Society of Environmental Journalists, Poynter Institute, and the International Center for Journalists have worked to build media capacity globally to cover climate change stories. Efforts at Stanford University, the University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Rhode Island sponsor programming and fellowships that in part help bolster journalism in this area. Through face-to-face workshops and online efforts, The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has sought to link the media and science communities. Meanwhile, powerful, widely read sites and blogs such as “Dot Earth,” hosted by the New York Times, Climate Central, Real Climate, The Conversation, and Climate Progress have fostered professional dialogue, greater awareness of science, and called attention to reporting and communications issues. Journalists and scientists have had ongoing conversations as part of the regular publication and reporting processes, and professional conferences and events bring the two communities together. Issues that continue to animate these discussions include conveying the degree to which climate science can be said to be “settled” and how to address uncertainty. Through some of these capacity-building efforts, news media have become increasingly aware of audience dynamics including how citizens respond to pessimistic reports, or “doom and gloom,” versus solutions-oriented reports. Professional dialogue has also revolved around the ethical dimensions of conveying a story at the level of global importance. Still, with issues of climate change communication on display for more than two decades now, certain tensions and dynamics persist. Notably, journalists seek clarity from scientists, while climate change experts and advocates for and against taking climate action often continue to demand that journalists resist the temptation to oversimplify or hype the latest empirical findings, while at the same time urging that journalists do not underestimate potential climate risks.

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