About a month ago I
was invited to represent the Cabot Institute at
the All Parliamentary Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) meeting on
“Communicating Risk and Uncertainty around Climate Change”. All Party Groups are groups of MPs and Lords with a common
interest they wish to discuss, who meet regularly but fairly informally. Here
are the APPCCG register, blog, Twitter and list of events.
The speakers
were James Painter (University of Oxford), Chris Rapley (UCL) and Fiona Harvey (The Guardian), and the chair was
(Lord) Julian Hunt (UCL). Rather than write up my
meeting notes, I’ll focus on the key points.
[Disclaimer: All quotes
and attributions are based on my recollections and note-taking, and may not be
exact.]
1. People have a
finite pool of worry
I'll start with this
useful phrase, mentioned (I think by Chris) in the discussion. Elke Weber
describes this:
"As worry increases about one type of
risk, concern about other risks has been shown to go down, as if people had
only so much capacity for worry or a finite pool of worry.
Increased concern about global warming may result in decreased concern about
other risks...the recent financial crisis reduced concern about climate change
and environmental degradation." -- “What shapes perceptions of climate
change?”; pdf
currently here)
Lessons: We cannot expect or ask people to worry about
everything: concern about other issues can reduce concern about climate change,
while evoking strong emotions about climate change can reduce concern about
other issues. So Chris encouraged talking about opportunities,
rather than threats, wherever possible.
2. People interpret
uncertainty as ignorance
People often interpret
the word "uncertainty" as complete ignorance, rather than, for
example, partial ignorance(..!) or a well-defined range of possible outcomes.
This may be due to language: "I'm not certain" is close to "I
don't know".
Just as important is
exposure to research science. Science is often presented as a book of facts, when
in fact it is a messy process of reducing our uncertainty about the
world. At a school this year the head teacher told us about an Ofsted
inspection during which they had a fantastic science workshop, where groups of
students solved challenging problems using real data. At the end of the day,
the inspector said: "Fine, but wouldn't it have been quicker to have told
them the answer first?"
Lessons: Revolutionise the education system.
3. People are
uncomfortable with uncertainty
Even when people do understand
uncertainty, it can become a convenient rug under which to brush difficult
decisions. Chris said that over-emphasising uncertainty leads to
decision-making paralysis. When a decision invokes fear or anxiety (or, I would
add, political disagreement), uncertainty can be used to dismiss the decision
entirely.
"The Higgs
boson", Chris said, "was not a ball bearing found down the back of
sofa, but a statistical result". It was just possible it hadn't been
discovered. But it wasn't reported this way. The Higgs, of course, does not
invoke fear, anxiety or political disagreement (though please leave comments
below if you disagree).
Lessons: Decision paralysis might be reduced by
talking in terms of confidence rather than uncertainty.
But perhaps more importantly...
4. People do accept
the existence of risk
Finite worry and the
problems of talking about uncertainty need not mean deadlock, James and Chris
argued, because people do understand the concept of risk.
They accept there are irreducible uncertainties when making
decisions. Businesses are particularly familiar with risk, of course.
James mentioned that Harvard Business School is actively viewing climate change in this way:
"It's striking that anyone frames this
question in terms of 'belief,' saying things like, 'I don't believe in climate
change,'… I think it's better seen as a
classic managerial question about decision-making under uncertainty." --
Forest L. Reinhardt, Business and Environment Institute faculty co-chair, HBS
Viewed in this way,
the problem is not whether to make a decision based on uncertain or incomplete
information, which is nearly always the case in other spheres (Chris: “Why
should climate change be a special case required to have absolute
certainty?”). The problem is whether the decision made is to bet against
mainstream climate science:
"It seems clear that no one can
know exactly what's going to happen--the climate is a hugely complex
system, and there's a lot going on"....[The vast majority of the world's
scientists] may be wrong. But it seems to me foolish to bet that they are certainly wrong." -- Rebecca
Henderson, Business and Environment Institute faculty co-chair, HBS
Chris pointed out that
the Technical Summary of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of
climate science uses
the word "uncertainty" a thousand times and the word “risk” not at
all, so it is not surprising the media focus on uncertainty. And how well
humans understand risk is a matter worthy of much discussion. But as James writes:
“There is... a growing body of literature
suggesting that risk language may be a good, or at least a less bad,
way of communicating climate change to the general
public”. -- "Climate Change in the Media:
Reporting Risk and Uncertainty", (Executive Summary, page viii)
Lessons: Where possible, talk in terms of risk not uncertainty;
see for example the IPCC report on extreme weather and, naturally, our book Risk and Uncertainty Assessment for
Natural Hazards.
5. Scientists have
little training
Most of us are not
well trained - perhaps hardly at all - in science communication. But we must
consider how the way we present numbers affects their interpretation. In
2007, the IPCC said the likelihood that most of global warming since the
mid-20th century was caused by greenhouse gas emissions was assessed to be
greater than 90%. This year they made a similar statement but the likelihood
was 95% or greater. Chris said that if a journalist asked, "What does
it mean to increase from 90% confident to 95% confident?", a scientist
could make this clearer with "[We think] the chance climate change is
natural is now half as likely as before."
He also pointed out
that we don't have training in how to deal with the "street fight" of
the climate debate. In my experience, this is one of the two main reasons why
most of my colleagues do not do public engagement (the other being time
commitment).
Lessons: For communicating uncertainty and risk, I
recommend UnderstandingUncertainty.org. For dealing with the street fight, my advice is first to start with a
lot of listening, not talking, to get a feel for the landscape. And
to talk to climate scientists already engaging on how to avoid and deal with
conflict (if, indeed, they are avoiding or dealing with conflict...).
6. Journalists have
little (statistical) training
The IPCC assessment
reports use a "language" of uncertainty, where phrases such as
"extremely likely" are given a specific meaning (in this case, 95% or
greater likelihood). But James said that only 15% of media articles about this
year's report explained the meaning of this uncertainty language.
And in the discussion
someone quoted a journalist as saying "The IPCC report says it has
95% confidence – what do the other 5% of the scientists think?" In other
words, confusing the idea of a consensus and a confidence interval. There was a
laugh at this in the room. But I think this is easily done by people who do not
spend all day thinking about statistics. That would be: the majority of the
human race.
Lessons: Er, many journalists could benefit from more
statistical training. Here is what that might look like.
7. "Newspaper
editors are extremely shallow, generally"
Fiona, her tongue only
slightly in cheek, gave us this memorably-made and disappointing (if
predictable) point.
Just because something
is important it doesn't mean it will get into a news outlet. An editor
might go to a cocktail party, talk to their glamorous celebrity
friends, hear some current opinion, and then the next day their paper says...
In other words, the
social diary - including meetings with high profile climate sceptics - can have
a substantial influence on the viewpoint taken. (Of course, she noted, the
editor of The Guardian is a profound man, not influenced by such superficiality).
To counter this we would need to go to influential people and whisper
in their ears too. We would need to launch a prawn cocktail
offensive - or more appropriately, as one wit suggested, a goats
cheese offensive. You heard it here first. And last.
Lessons: Go to more cocktail parties hosted by
influential people.
8. There are many
types of climate sceptic
There was generally
support of scepticism by the speakers. Chris said it was perfectly valid for
the public to ask scientists "Can we see your working?"; in other
words, to ask for more details, code and data. All the speakers said they
don't use the word "denier".
James said we should
not generalise, and described four types of sceptic: trend, attribution,
impacts, and policy. A trend sceptic would not be convinced there is global
warming; an attribution sceptic about how much is man-made; an impacts sceptic
might say we don't know enough about when and how severe the impacts will
be; and a policy sceptic would take issue with how to tackle the problem.
(Personally, I believe there are as many types of sceptic as there are
sceptics, but that would be a longer list to write down). Fiona pointed
out that one person can be all these types of sceptic, moving from one argument
to another as a discussion progresses. Some thought this would be incoherent
(i.e. kettle logic, contradictory arguments) but others
thought it could be coherent to be sceptical for more than one of those
reasons.
Lessons: Treat each sceptic as an individual (flower);
don't assume they are one type of sceptic when they may be another, or more than
one.
9. Trust is
important
What determines
people's views on climate change? As James pointed out, there is evidence
that what drives opinions is not science, or even the media
(they determine only the topics of discussion), but political, cultural and
social values. Fiona had said earlier in the meeting, "Climate change is
more politicised than ever before in my lifetime: it is becoming a matter
of right or left. This is very, very scary. If you allow this, you lose
any hope of doing anything sensible about it."
All this is true. But
I'll end with a slightly more optimistic quote, which I think was from Chris:
"The sea change in the battle with tobacco companies was when the
message got across that the adverts were not trustworthy." I quote this not
because I believe it is the same as the climate debate, and not because
sceptics are untrustworthy (though some may be), but because I (some might say,
choose to) interpret it to mean that trust is important. When people trust the
messenger, the message is more likely believed.
Lessons: Other things are important, but sometimes
communication is a matter of trust. I emphasise this point
because it's what I already believe; others may disagree (politely, please...).
--/--
I would have liked to
add more references supporting the points made by the speakers, but ran out of
time. Some are in James' book mentioned above. Do please add them in the
comments if you have them.
The title of this
blogpost came from realising I had nine points to make and thinking of
this set of shows curated by Robin Ince celebrating
science, skepticism, and rationalism. If you're in the UK this December, do go.
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This blog is written by Dr Tamsin Edwards, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol and also features on her PLOS blog All Models Are Wrong.
Follow Tamsin on Twitter @flimsin
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| Tamsin Edwards |