Science PR Thread

[Sean Hayden]

I didn't want to drop these in the climate science thread. Feel free to change the title...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshe ... ts-us-all/

Part of what inspired me to write that column is that I am concerned by the rising eco-anxiety among young people. My daughter is 14 years old. While she herself is not scared, in part because I have explained the science to her, she told me many of her peers are.

In 2017, the American Psychological Association diagnosed rising eco-anxiety and called it “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” Studies from around the world document growing anxiety and depression, particularly among children, about climate change.

“One of my friends was convinced there would be a collapse of society in 2030 and ‘near term human extinction’ in 2050,” said Jeffrey. “She concluded that we’ve got ten years left to live.”

...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshe ... 6b581612d6

Environmental journalists and advocates have in recent weeks made a number of apocalyptic predictions about the impact of climate change. Bill McKibben suggested climate-driven fires in Australia had made koalas “functionally extinct.” Extinction Rebellion said “Billions will die” and “Life on Earth is dying.” Vice claimed the “collapse of civilization may have already begun.”

...

Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change. In October, an activist with Extinction Rebellion (”XR”) — an environmental group founded in 2018 to commit civil disobedience to draw awareness to the threat its founders and supporters say climate change poses to human existence — and a videographer, were kicked and beaten in a London Tube station by angry commuters. And last week, an XR co-founder said a genocide like the Holocaust was “happening again, on a far greater scale, and in plain sight” from climate change.

...

First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species. “‘Our children are going to die in the next 10 to 20 years.’ What’s the scientific basis for these claims?” BBC’s Andrew Neil asked a visibly uncomfortable XR spokesperson last month.

...

[Brian Peacock]

People are already dying because of the effects of Climate Change and environmental degradation - it just doesn't feel like a problem while we can still buy toothpaste at the supermarket. Nonetheless, there is a PR problem in talking about these issues in apocalyptic terms - it risks giving the impression that it's all hopeless, and although the effects of global heating due to CO2 levels are baked into the future at the moment we actually can do something about it from this point onwards. However, in having those conversations we have to be honest and talk about how even the best, least dramatic consequences of global heating are still pretty grim.

I'd also point out that Andrew Neil is famously somewhat of a bad-faith mouthpiece for climate inaction.

[Sean Hayden]

I'm not sure how big of a problem this actually is. I know he mentions the APA and British psychologists are concerned, but he doesn't give us any real idea of how much of an impact this is having. It's possible that a relatively few cases may be deemed interesting, and singled out for research by psychologists.

That's no excuse for the wild exaggerations and other mistakes made by some climate activists. But it's possible for their example to be a problem that doesn't cause a crisis --everything's a crisis! For me it's more about presenting science in a reasonable way. It's complicated. If your intended audience is the general public, and for climate activists it is, then their inability to access a lot of science should be taken into account. Any claims will be difficult to verify. If you make a remarkable claim then it has to be pretty much dogma, unfuckingassailable. Telling people that billions are going to die because of climate change doesn't come close to meeting that standard. Where in the literature will the public find answers to their questions about such a claim? It's inaccessible to them. So, if they accept the claim it won't be because they've understood it. They'll just be picking a side. That's great for politics, and climate activism is politics. But it's politics tied to science...

[JimC]

It's a tricky one, this, getting the right balance in speaking about climate change and its consequence. Done with too much pessimism, it can lead to either fatalistic despair and/or chronic and debilitating anxiety, particularly in the young. To me, the best way forward is to spell out the increasing dangers in a fairly neutral, scientific way, but emphasise the positive effects of strong, concerted action by a more aware and growing population of activists, whose voting strength will be a stronger and stronger force in future elections. Young XR activists are passionate and positive, not despairing, at least the ones I've met...

[Sean Hayden]

The group here seems positive too. I've only interacted with them through email, but they're hardly extreme or negative. I'm not convinced there's a significant problem in that regard. But there's definitely a lot to discuss about presenting science, especially one so tied to policy as climate science.

[macdoc]

Parents ( mine included ) have been scaring kids with fire and brimstone fohEVAH.

Kids get past it ....this one they are savvy enough to know it's a PROBELM

[pErvinalia]

Telling people that billions are going to die because of climate change doesn't come close to meeting that standard.

Who's telling people that billions are going to die?

[Brian Peacock]

I know for my own part I've had to deal with a bit of climate anxiety and I consider myself decidedly inclined towards the sciences, pretty well informed, and someone who tries to avoid confusing moral opprobrium for rational belief or political necessity. And I guess we have to acknowledge, at least in passing, that the climate and the environment are only two issues among many that cast the future in a darker aspect for younger citizens - even though in my view they are the two issues upon which all other social, political, and economic matters depend.

Nobody wants to burden children with extreme anxieties and existential fears, but at the same time telling them that there's nothing to worry about, or even that the concerns and passions they do have about the climate/environment are misinformed, misplaced, or malign, like a lot of right-leaning mouthpieces do, isn't really protecting them from anything other than the facts and/or an understanding that they have real skin in the game.

The consequences of global heating are scary. There's grounds to be frightened about the state and nature of the world our kids are inheriting from us. I'm frightened. Being frightened isn't irrational, though being paralysed by fear isn't good either.

I know this thread is about science communication, about finding and explaining the grounds upon which we might build a sound social consensus and through that some workable public policies towards a better end. In my view that better end is something which could be brought into sharper focus, in a positive way, at least in a way that might go some distance to ameliorating the potentially crushing, paralysing impact of apocalyptic doom-and-gloom narratives.

Nonetheless, when I hear people like Andrew Neil -- and he's by no means the only one -- chiding climate/environmental activists for 'frightening the children', for being a root cause of psychological discomfort and distress, or worse, for being indistinguishable from bullies, fascist, extremists, or even terrorists, I also realise that people like that will resort to anything to protect themselves - and they do that out of fear too, because they realise or intuit at some level that the 'better end' I'm thinking of casts the future in a darker aspect for them than the one they've traditionally presumed to expect for themselves.

Unfortunately, although we can, and should, and actually do, talk about these issues in reasonable ways and found our understandings on rational grounds we cannot denude them of The Political. It is our political natures expressed in past action which have brought us to the circumstances we find ourselves in today, and likewise, from this point forward it is only our political natures expressed though action that can deal with the consequence. The Science is only part of that puzzle.

[Brian Peacock]

Interesting piece on science communication in The Guardian today...

"...uncertainty is the engine of science, and a sign of knowledgable humility. John Krebs, the former chair of the Food Standards Agency who dealt with numerous crises such as BSE and foot-and-mouth disease, came up with a useful checklist for science communication in such crises: say what you know, then say what you don’t know; then, having acknowledged the uncertainty, say what research is being done, what people can do in the meantime, and, vitally, that advice will change as more is learned."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dApp_Other

[L'Emmerdeur]

Lurking existential danger has been an element of childhood in various places since forever. For the better part of a century now it's been a nearly universal experience: learning that there is an imminent threat of utter destruction and horror hanging over the lives of us all. Most of us survive the trauma.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, and we weren't brought up on The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead, or even good old Harry Potter.