On the Importance of Semantics in Framing an Argument — James Painter in Regard to Reframing the Foolish Public Dispute over What Is Causing Climate Change — and a Comment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Inept Communication Style

© 2013 Peter Free

 

04 October 2013

 

 

The background fact — a scientific consensus

 

The scientific consensus (insofar as one is able to sample such a thing) is that there is 95 percent certainty that human beings are responsible for contributing to the major drivers of global warming.

 

 

The counter-factual argument

 

From a metaphorically representative person on the street:

 

 

Well, that means there’s a 5 percent possibility that they’re wrong — so scientists cannot be called certain — therefore, we do not need to be concerned.

 

James Painter (at the Reuters Institute) said of the climate disconnect between scientists and the public:

 

 

[I]n the USA, one widely-respected survey in 2012 found that 54 per cent of Americans believe global warming is caused mostly by human activities, which compares with the 95 per cent plus of climate scientists who think it is.

 

The same survey suggested that only 44 per cent of Americans believe most scientists agree that global warming is happening. It is a surprising figure, and one that is replicated in other countries.

 

© 2013 James Painter, Climate Change in the Media - Reporting Risk and Uncertainty, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, I B Taurus (publisher) (September 2013) (at page 7) (paragraph spit)

 

 

Semantics matter

 

Painter is interested in how to better translate what’s probablistically certain to scientists into language that the public can comprehend, without immediately flying through the scientifically tiny orifices that lead to denial:

 

 

If scientists constantly talk about uncertainty, often the response of the listener is not necessarily apathy but lapsing into an unhappy situation of not knowing how to proceed, and therefore discounting or dodging the problem.

 

© 2013 James Painter, Climate Change in the Media - Reporting Risk and Uncertainty, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, I B Taurus (publisher) (September 2013) (at page 8)

 

In Painter’s view and mine, part of the “Science versus Lay People” disconnect — as to what is causing global warming, or even whether it is occurring — boils down to the public’s inability to understand the statistical ways in which scientists routinely examine and frame their data.

 

In science, a 95 percent confidence parameter means — in something reasonably well researched — that that one can (and should) pretty well act as if the finding is true.

 

Not so, among many of the American and Australian publics, who — with ready assistance from those with a financial stake in leaving things the way they are in regard to climate — like to slither through the tiniest of Complacence’s many doorways.

 

 

How should we alter science’s semantics, so as to make critical points more effectively?

 

Painter points to risk framing — as opposed to certainty/uncertainty parameters —as a way to ameliorate the communication gap:

 

 

The study’s lead author, James Painter, suggests a better way of framing climate change: risk.

 

Focusing on the positive of what we know (“Scientists say there is a 95-percent risk that humans are causing climate change”) versus the negative of our uncertainty (“Scientists are 95-percent certain that humans are causing climate change.”)

 

It’s also a term that aligns the colloquial definition with the scientific definition of the word: 95 percent is a whole lot of risk.

 

© 2013 Alexis Sobel Fitts, Risky business - What uncertainty means for scientists vs. journalists, Columbia Journalism Review (01 October 2013) (paragraph split and reformatted)

 

 

Then there’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself — whose written communications are often singularly obtuse, given their alleged policy purpose

 

Every time I read one of the IPCC’s publications, I groan.

 

This group tries its hardest to avoid communicating to anyone busy, influential, or scientifically uninterested — apparently for fear that something it says might cause irritation with one of the world’s many factions of powerful idiots.

 

Take a look, for example, at the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers (27 September 2013) — which overviews its latest climate report.

 

Business and government executives and appellate lawyers (for example) — who are accustomed to summary presentations of data that are concise, accurate, and properly prioritized — will be at a loss in trying to take away a summary sentence or paragraph from the IPCC’s summarized findings.

 

The Summary for Policymakers is, instead, a set of highlighted and fragmented bullet points that go on for 36 pages of unnecessarily detailed findings, when evaluated from the point of view of its “motivate good governance” purpose:

 

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change.

 

It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. The IPCC is a scientific body under the auspices of the United Nations (UN).

 

It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.

 

© 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Organization, ipcc.ch (visited 04 October 2013) (paragraph split)

 

In other words, one can assume that the IPCC is supposed to:

 

(i) gather climate data,

 

(ii) present it in comprehensible ways,

 

(iii) for the presumable purpose of (given its chartering organizations) generating knowledgeable action or omission in governance.

 

In regard to the 2013 Summary for Policymakers report, the level of unsummarized detail — and the Panel’s failure to draw an easily accessed conclusion from the compilation — works directly against policy makers’ time and understanding constraints.

 

Nowhere does the Summary baldly come out and say, “For sure, it’s heating up — we humans did it — do something.”

 

Yet, if you look at the Summary’s tedious compilation of physical data bullets, that is exactly what the policy implication is.

 

 

The moral? — If you want people to understand something, speak their language and appeal to their self-interest

 

Be clear, concise, and prioritize.  Draw an understandable conclusion.

 

If uncertainty actually is an issue, draw illustrative parallels from people’s ordinary lives — which show how all of us make decisions in spite of being unsure.