Sarah DeWeerdt, September 7, 2021, Anthropocene
Members of the public have trouble understanding words and phrases that climate scientists often use, according to a new study. The confusion affects both people who accept the reality of climate change and climate change doubters.
If climate change is to be addressed, scientists can’t just communicate amongst themselves. They also need to make their findings understood by policymakers and the general public so that we can collectively take action. This need has led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate-science organizations to step up their efforts at science communication.
To find out if these efforts are hitting the mark, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with members of the U.S. general public about key terms used in climate change communications.
The group of study participants was about evenly split between the climate-concerned (those who accept the scientific consensus that climate change is mostly human-caused) and the climate-ambivalent (who hold varying views on the reality of climate change).
In general, participants found many of the terms unfamiliar and too technical. And the sentences that were meant to clarify the terms were sometimes no help because they were wordy and full of jargon.
“Words that might be familiar to climate scientists may not be familiar to people who are not in climate science,” says lead author Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Behavioral Science at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy and Dornsife Department of Psychology.