How to Inoculate the Public Against Misinformation About Climate Change – Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

By Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal and Edward Maibach

Article · Jan 23, 2017

Our article “How to Inoculate the Public Against Misinformation About Climate Change” was published January 23rd, 2017, in Global Challenges: Climate Change.

Prior studies have found widespread public misunderstanding about the scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. A series of experiments have also found that simply informing people of the fact that 97% of climate scientists are convinced human-caused global warming is happening, significantly increases public understanding of the consensus. In turn, the increase in public understanding of the scientific consensus is associated with smaller, but potentially important increases in respondents’ own conviction that global warming is happening, human-caused, and a worrisome threat that requires action.

However, the basic fact of the scientific consensus has long been challenged by opponents of climate action, who have attempted to sow doubt among the public.

The study tested whether preemptive “inoculation messages” can protect the beneficial effects of communicating the scientific consensus against real-world misinformation. We found that inoculation messages can protect much of the beneficial effect of the scientific consensus message, across politically diverse members of the public. Just as a small dose of vaccine activates the body’s immune system to protect against an infectious disease, so message inoculation can help protect the mind against the effects of disinformation.

In this study, we divided participants into 6 groups. Group 1 was a control group. Group 2 received the scientific consensus message, which increased their own estimate of the consensus by about 20 percentage points, consistent with prior studies. Group 3 received a classic disinformation message (the Oregon Petition) arguing that over 31,000 American scientists have signed a petition claiming that “there is no convincing scientific evidence of human-caused global warming.” This reduced participant’s estimates of the consensus by about 9 percentage points. Group 4 received both messages, which canceled each other out.

…(read more).

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Can America Survive the Trump/Corporate Media Industrial Complex?

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 9, 2017

The Big Picture Progressive Panel – Zaid Jilani, The Intercept & Lynn Stuart Parramore, Freelance Journalist. Corporate media handed Donald Trump between $2 and $3 billion in free coverage, making him president, just to jack up their ratings, is the biggest story of the year, perhaps even the biggest story of our lifetimes. The directors and managers and producers of a small handful of immensely powerful and profitable media corporations made the decision, in 2015, that The Donald Trump show was more important to put on TV every day and night than any actual news. And why did they do this? They did this because The Donald Trump Show brings ratings, and ratings determine their profitability. This sick, symbiotic relationship won Trump the White House, and it’s what will keep his presidency afloat long after it reaches its past due date. Oh yeah, and if you’re expecting some kind of mea culpa from the mainstream media for installing Trump, then good luck. That would mean that mainstream corporate television media would have to admit that its primary goal is to make money, not keep people informed about what really matters. Not going to happen. So, can America survive the Donald Trump/Corporate Media industrial complex?

We Just Passed a Dangerous New Climate Tipping Point

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 10, 2017

Thom talks with Red State Contributor Bryan Pruitt and Progressive Organizer Kai Newkirk about Jeff Session’s Attorney General confirmation hearings, whether Republicans will replace Obamacare, Bernie Sanders’ continuing progressive push. Then, Naomi Ages, Climate Liability Project Lead at Greenpeace USA, discusses what to expect under a potential Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 11, 2017

Big Picture Fact Of the Day…

Must See – Will We See The End Of Seafood In Our Lifetime?

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 13, 2017

Big Picture Fact Of The Day…

Ocean of Garbage | CBC

CBC

Uploaded on Apr 13, 2011

A Vancouver photographer shares the shocking images he saw at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch near Hawaii.

How Much Waste Is Dumped In the Ocean?

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 16, 2017

Big Picture Fact Of The Day…

Jim Hansen: Hell Will Break Loose – Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms

Climate State

Published on Sep 17, 2016

The main point that I want to make concerns the threat of irreparable harm, which I feel we have not communicated well enough to people who most need to know, the public and policymakers. I’m not sure how we can do that better, but I comment on it at the end of this transcript.

In response to the study outlined here, NASA launched a new operation to assess ice melt, OMG (Ocean Melting Greenland). https://omg.jpl.nasa.gov

Sign up for Dr. James Hansen’s email list to receive his latest communications: http://bit.ly/1UzeHI1

Subscribe to Hansen’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn3Y…

Read the study:
Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/376…

Read the full transcript here: http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/2…

Global Sea Ice Just Fell Off the Cliff…

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 17, 2017

Big Picture Fact Of The Day

Pessimism about climate change does not justify inaction – Gar Alperovitz

Published: November 10, 2014  Originally published in Al Jazeera America on November 10, 2014.

“Even if the United States deals with its carbon emission problem, the Chinese won’t. So what’s the point?”

“You can’t condemn the entire global South to abandon energy development, and you can’t provide enough with solar and wind. So what’s the point?”

“Besides, the whole enterprise of trying to achieve a future sufficiently carbon-free to deal with the most important problems is politically hopeless.”

These challenges are sometimes spoken, sometimes not, but they commonly and powerfully weaken efforts to deal with the climate crisis. Despite the well-funded bluster of disingenuous or, at best, delusional skeptics and deniers, a majority of Americans believe the climate is changing in worrying ways, and many (PDF) also believe that these changes pose a threat to current and future generations. But this belief has not yet translated into action at a scale adequate to the problem we face.

One reason for this is that once we recognize the magnitude of the effort that will be required to avert disaster, we all too often discover our vested interest in pessimism. After all, if the situation is hopeless, why act? But it’s time to challenge the structure of feeling that mires us in pessimism and inaction.

We appear to be on a trajectory well past the 2 degree Celsius rise in average global temperature long considered by scientists the maximum allowable to sustain life on Earth as we’ve known it. As Naomi Klein documents in her new book, “This Changes Everything,” many experts — from climate change scientists to the World Bank to the International Energy Agency — are warning of temperature increases of 4 or more degrees. Changes of this magnitude will likely result in widespread flooding, collapsing water systems, decreases in agricultural production, increases in disease, massive migrations and social strife.

…(read more).