I am traveling this week, so this is a short column about an issue I have been pondering of late. Those of us who report on science in public fora such as this, are motivated by the hope that our efforts will have an impact, at least indirectly, on the setting of public policy. Unfortunately when we look around, it often feels like we are having no impact at all. For example, here in the U.S. we stubbornly resist converting to the metric system despite the clear absurdity of our system, and we indiscriminately feed antibiotics to our livestock even though we know this practice is creating drug-resistant superbugs.
When considering how public opinion and conventional wisdom develop, I try to remember that different people are influenced in different ways. For example, if you want to influence me, your best course of action would be to produce some reliable data and display it as a graph. Graphs speak to me. However, that sort of data-focused story telling tends not to influence public opinion, so an aspiring science author must find a more compelling way to present his/her story to the reader. Each week, I aspire to do that here in Common Science®. Based on feedback I get, sometimes I hit the mark and sometimes I miss badly.
Consider how the topic of global average temperature is discussed in science reporting compared to how it is received by the general public. As you may know, global average temperature has increased by approximately 1 °C since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1850. Over the past couple of decades, most international climate conferences have focused on approaches to limit the total temperature increase from 1850 to a total of 2 °C. As time has passed, it has become increasingly clear that we will exceed this target and will need to set a new goal of something like 3-4 °C.
Despite the fact that an increase in a global average temperature of 4 °C greater would usher in a world filled with starvation, disease, and war, as yet no significant actions are being taken to prevent this from occurring. Yes, I know there are more solar power stations and hybrid cars, but we will not make any serious impact on global warming until we start taking much more dramatic steps. I think that one of the reasons that more people are not moved to action by global warming is that a temperature increase of 2 or 4 °C doesn’t sound like much because the numbers are so small.
We science writers have tried many approaches to finding a way to explain the outsized implications of a 1, 2, or 4 °C temperature rise in a manner that allows the reader to appreciate the gravity. I often use that analogy that global average temperature was only 4 °C colder than it is today during the most recent ice age to illustrate that “small” changes in temperature can result in “big” changes in climate. Other commons explanations I have seen used include:
- that the temperature rise at the North and South Poles is higher than the average and that polar temperatures have a disproportionate effect on weather,
- that the 1 °C temperature rise that we have seen so far is already resulting in more droughts and heat waves,
- that the heat required to warm the world by 1 °C is the same as dropping four Hiroshima-sized atom bombs per second every second since the year 1970, and
- that the U.S. Department of Defense is already preparing for climate change related global conflicts.
I find these examples to be quite compelling. Nevertheless, polls consistently show that only about a third of Americans are concerned about climate change. I am starting to think that it is not that we science writers lack in our communication skills, but that humans as a species lack the capacity to take decisive action to prevent future harm.
I’m pondering these issues in particular the week, because I’ve just read what might be the most important book of my life. I plan to publish a column next week which I hope will shake you to your core and compel you to take specific and significant changes in how you approach your own medical care and that of your family. So I hope I figure out how to write a science column that does that some time in the next seven days. Come back next week to see if I succeed.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com. Think that this column includes important points that others should consider? Share this column on Facebook or Twitter. Want more Common Science? Follow me on Twitter on @Commonscience.
