Elise Gornish is a restoration ecologist who focuses her research and outreach program on arid land vegetation management at the University of Arizona. She is a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
Posted on 11/30/2017 7:06:41 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Reframing the situation from one of despair to one of opportunity could help to resolve the conflicts over climate change.
About 80 percent of media coverage of climate change, and 90 percent of coverage of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, framed the subject in terms of disaster, according to a 2013 study by James Painter, head of the Journalism Fellowship Program at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Some particularly hysterical recent pieces have even proclaimed that changes will occur so rapidly that the world will be uninhabitable (and we will all be dead) in the next 10 years.
This tone and communications tactic is likely to be ineffective. Decades of psychology research reveal that individuals are extremely poor at assessing future negative consequences of current behaviors. Individuals tend to employ emotion, rather than facts, to make judgements, suggesting that warnings about the impact of climate change might not be adequately evaluated by skeptics. Discussions of climate change instead should be reframed to highlight opportunities for change and possibilities for cultivating environmental and economic benefit.
Reframing could include accounts of previous ways that people have effectively tackled environmental problems or adapted to a changing climate.
If there is any hope of changing minds and behaviors on this crucial issue, those of us driving discussions of climate change have a responsibility to engage climate skeptics. Appeals using more optimistic language might be our best strategy for doing so. Reframings must steer clear of the endless quibbling over minor details of climate science findings and instead repackage forecasts into more digestible and immediate material. Such a strategy could revive dialogue and transform skeptics into allies.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.scientificamerican.com ...
Elise Gornish is a restoration ecologist who focuses her research and outreach program on arid land vegetation management at the University of Arizona. She is a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
From Doom and Gloom to the Russian Revolution ?
Climate change is mainly caused by the sun and there really is not a thing they can do.
Current Sci American is about at the same level as Omni magazine was in 1980.
They need to rename the magazine Propaganda International!
.
Elise Gornish is a propagandist masquerading as a 'scientist'. She is shamelessly attempting to substitute a different-but-still-phony narrative about 'climate change' for the current phony alarmist narrative about 'climate change'.
She is merely playing a game of 'good garbage science' vs. 'bad garbage science'.
Hey Elise - wouldn't it be better to substitute real science in place of phony alarmist 'science'?
Why are you so afraid of truth-telling, Elise? Your words and actions discredit all of science, not just the corrupt branches such as 'climate science'. The damage that you and others like you do to real science is heartbreaking.
Your problem is that the public has seen the small.man behind the curtain, Elise.
The idiots who believe a humbug have turned out to be far less numerous than anticipated.
And, really wanting more of your money.
Just ask these people if we can stop with this “climate change” debate, and just all agree that pollution is bad and we should stop it.
That will NOT be good enough for them.
That proves they have another agenda.
Existential pessimism is a key aspect of Leftist thinking, and without it, global warming loses much of its appeal to the Left. They can no more give up apocalyptic warnings about global warming than a crack whore can give up crack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.