The most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t pull any punches. The globe continues to warm, ice continues to melt at an alarming pace, and the seas continue to rise. Climate change isn’t some distant dilemma. It’s already happening. The science is solid, and the problem is urgent. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri at a news conference in March.
Yet most Americans don’t seem to be all that concerned. According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, only 40% cited climate change as a major threat to the US. And even fewer — roughly a third — listed global warming as a top priority for Congress and the White House.
So what gives? Why aren’t people getting the message? Are we* — the science journalists –delivering it wrong? Perhaps we need more stories, and better storytellers.
“Why don’t you do something about climate change?” I asked my husband, Soren Wheeler. He’s the senior producer of Radiolab, a crazy popular science program that tells some of the most compelling stories on the airwaves.
“Because,” he said, “climate change is the anti-story.”
Naturally, I asked him to explain. Here is an edited version of the conversation that ensued over burgers and beers**.
CW: You told me climate change is the anti-story. What did you mean by that?
SW: Are you sure I said exactly that?
CW: Yes!
SW: Ok. First, we should talk about what I mean by “story.” I mean it has some arc. There are changes in mood or emotion. Something happens. It lands somewhere. It could be a character that needs something and then gets that thing. Or maybe it’s an idea that is out of favor and then it’s in favor.
Radiolab really likes to have a story that is connected to an idea. The story makes you ask a question or gives you some insight, or the idea comes first and the story is evidence for the idea. It’s got to be a tight intimate relationship. Let’s be clear: All of this should be about whether Radiolab would want to do a climate change story. I think there are plenty of outlets that should, could have awesome climate change stories.
CW: Are you going to answer the question now?
SW: Yeah. Stories are better when they’re concrete, direct, immediate, and you can have a vicarious experience. But climate, by definition, is weather spread out over time and over space. So weather is what happened here today. And climate is the average of what happened in the last 200 years across the whole globe. So with the very definition of climate you’ve taken away all of your chance of drama and directness and made it diffuse. I think that’s what makes climate change so hard, or the anti-story.
CW: I don’t buy that. Radiolab finds ways to tell stories about abstract ideas all the time. I don’t see climate as being terribly different from any of the other broad scientific concepts you’ve discussed in the past.
SW: Usually those broad abstract stories have some specific instance. Weather should be that thing for climate. There are some great stories about dudes who fly their planes into the eye of the hurricane to take measurements. But there’s a huge gap between stories that have to do with weather and climate change writ large. People can climb in and be skeptical about whether that’s really climate change or not. They can always disconnect your story from the idea that you’re trying to get across.
When you say, “do a story on climate change,” you mean do a story that communicates the idea that the climate is changing globally because of human actions. I can’t find a story that can get you all the way to that idea compellingly without some gap, like the gap between weather and climate. Someone could jump in and say, “that’s not really a trend.” And if I want to say, “yes, it is,” then I have to go back to the math and the stats, things that have no emotions.
CW: Do you think that Radiolab has some obligation to get that message across?
SW: We don’t have an educational mission. We do documentary news. It’s journalism that doesn’t specifically pursue the “important” social issues of our day. It’s harder to connect with audiences in the way that we want to if the reason we’re doing something is because it is socially important. The reason we do something is because we find it interesting.
CW: So the problem is that climate change isn’t interesting?
SW: No. It’s interesting. I want to do a story on climate change. If it weren’t interesting I would have no desire. It’s a frustrating struggle. We have a particular brand of thing that we do. Our shtick is curiosity and wonder and awe and finding some surprising insight about all of us inside a tiny example. It just happens to be really hard to fit climate change into that model. Where is the awe?
CW: The “awe” is that a single species has consumed enough fossil fuels in just a couple of centuries to irreparably alter the climate of this enormous fucking planet.
SW: I’ll give you that.
But I want to be surprised. If you’re going to write a climate change story, I know already what you’re going to tell me. You can’t surprise me. As a reporter, I prefer to be in a position where I’m asking an honest question, an authentic question that I don’t know the answer to. I might then surprise the listener by what I find. Climate change – I believe in it. So what am I going to do? Go out and shore up my own beliefs in front of people? That doesn’t seem to have emotional power.
Maybe it was wrong of me to say it’s the anti-story, to make some kind of declaration that there would never be a story that could communicate the “global trend caused by humans” idea. But I have not been able to find one.
CW: Isn’t the denialism a story?
You’re on the right track. One way to do a story about climate change is to do a story about why people don’t believe it. Or to do a story where you go deep with a denialist and really try to understand them. And maybe if you’re lucky you lead them through a set of experiences that gets them to, if not totally change their minds, at least question what’s going on.
I’m also interested in the business side of climate change. Is the Arctic melting going to open up new oil drilling possibilities or a new shipping route? McKenzie Funk has a book out called Windfall that looks at the business side. The amazing thing is that once you’re interested in making money, truth trumps politics. The business side gives climate change an interesting reality that can be really surprising. At least right now it feels unexpected.
CW: I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re so talented. I find it hard to believe that you can’t find a way to talk about climate change.
SW: It’s unfortunate that in a transcript no one will pick up the sarcasm*** in your voice.
—
* These days my beat is largely health and medicine, so I rarely write about climate change. But I used to when I was on staff at Earth Magazine.
** Conflicts: I am married to the interviewee, and he paid for my burger, fries, and beer. Actually I guess you could make the argument that Radiolab paid for it.
*** I sound sarcastic even when I don’t mean to. He really IS very talented.
Image courtesy of Local Studies NSW on Flickr
I see Soren’s point here, but RadioLab constantly tells stories about the universe and physics and gigantic, yet conceptual, scientific pursuits spanning eons and, well, “all of the space” where no human has ever been nor will ever be in any distant lifetime. I don’t want to say he’s dragging his feet on this but, speaking from experience, it’s hard to get too motivated to tackle something so difficult over burgers and beers. Much easier to play the “impossible” card!
Adam, you’re right that we covered some abstract stuff, but there are two important differences. First, even with physics and the universe, we always find some way to tell the story of some specific moment. So if we talked about matter and anti-matter, we’d tell the “story” of two particles that meet and annihilate one another. It’s much harder to find specific instances that make “humans are causing a global climate trend” feel real, because is by definition about averages. You can find extreme weather stories, or rising sea level stories, but it’s easy to dismiss them as being unconnected to the larger trend. And, to my second point, people WILL dismiss them. Because unlike physics and the universe, climate change is politically charged and personal. So unless you want to preach to the choir and accept that the rest of the audience already turned you off, you need (even more than in other subjects) a compelling story that is happening here and now, that is surprising, that has an unexpected outcomes so it doesn’t smell like the same old trope and that is still tightly connected to the scientific ideas about climate. So, forgive me the pun, but climate change is the perfect storm of abstraction and confirmation bias.
What about land that has or is about to disappear due to sea level rise. Vanuatu, for example, or the Maldives. The dots connects directly there — sea level rise isn’t here today and gone tomorrow. Real people/animals/plants are at risk. Can you find the person standing on the last bit of their island holding his or her kitten?
Two comments. 1 of 2: Soren is dead on. See this post drawing on my 2007 book chapter on climate and communication: http://nyti.ms/1ffJYWR [G]lobal warming remains the antithesis of what is traditionally defined as news. Its intricacies, which often involve overlapping disciplines, confuse scientists, citizens, and reporters—even though its effects will be widespread, both in geography and across time. Journalism craves the concrete, the known, the here and now and is repelled by conditionality, distance, and the future.
2/2: There’s a great Radiolab story to do on cultural cognition, the body of science showing how more information further divides people when science sits amid ideological divisions. Climate vaccines, nanotechnology… Dot Earth: http://j.mp/dotcultcog Kahan’s site: http://culturalcognition.net
I thought the documentary The Island President found a good solution to the problem you describe: By following a person who had already made the connection—the connection between abstract trends and the effects on his place—it moved past the is-it-or-isn’t-it-happening story and into a much more interesting story about a particular person’s attempt to do something about it. It had some very surprising twists, too.
Also, I’m afraid that reality is closing the narrative gap for us. Of course weather and climate are still two different things, but we can now point to certain weather events and say, well, climate scientists predicted that these events were going to get more numerous, or more serious, or what have you. And guess what? That’s exactly what we’re looking at.
I agree with the island ideas. I’d been thinking similarly but more generally, why couldn’t the story be about something that is lost forever (a species, crop, lifestyle etc.), or changed irrevocably forever, as a result of climate change, though perhaps it’s still a bit early for that (?). The business case is the flip side, the potential emerging in a new world.
In other words, what Erica said.
It bothered me a bit to see this from a Radiolab producer (cuz I’m a fangirl, but also a climate science journalist) and I tried to figure out why.
As someone who pays a lot of attention to narrative, I agree that climate change as a topic is boring. But so is astronomy. And numbers. Numbers are definitely boring. But Radiolab has found stories within those topics, so why not within the topic of climate change? It’s not like you don’t tackle tough subjects (yellow rain?) so why not take on climate change as one of those?
In a way, you can see climate change as THE science problem of our century — it’s a topic tons of researchers are working really hard on, and the political actions taken to address it will affect every person on earth. As a science show, to rather conspicuously avoid it seems almost irresponsible.
And in fact, there are so many stories to tell — scientists trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to suck carbon out of the air. Scientists trying to understand whether or not there will be more clouds in the future, or less — and realizing that, wow, this is pretty crazy, but whether or not there will be more clouds or fewer clouds actually makes a Very Big Difference in how much warmer our world will get. Scientists trying to understand why, when presented with the facts on climate change, people’s minds do not change, and in fact, the more educated people are, the less likely they are to change their minds (that’s the cultural cognition stuff Andy was referencing.) Scientists who want very badly to link climate and weather, and other scientists who worry this misleads the public a little too much, is overly simple, and will backfire. Scientists who believe in climate change but think models are kind of an awful way to think about the future. Scientists who are attacked on a near-daily basis, even threatened, yet believe so strongly that their research is important that they go out of their way to communicate about it to the public (see Katherine Hayhoe.)
I’m a daily journalist mostly now, and don’t do Radiolab style stories or all that much longform. But I come across these little story nuggets all the time. It seems to me that if the Radiolab journalists worked even a little bit within the climate change topic they could find great narratives within. So I think the disappointment comes not from disagreeing with Soren that the topic of climate change is not narratively intriguing, but that most topics are, at their face, kind of boring (poverty, anyone?), but good journalists find the stories within. I think Radiolab can do great journalism, and I would love to see it try to do it within the topic of climate change.
I’m going to do something stupid and agree with Soren about climate change stories. Not that it’s stupid to agree with Soren (agreeing with Soren is usually the best bet) or that climate change stories should not be kept front and center (because they should be). But as stories, I personally am bored silly by them because their plots are completely predictable. As he says, no surprise, no curiosity, no awe. And as he says, shoring up your own beliefs in front of people. Climate change is an urgent message but without the Maldives, etc., it’s not much of a story.
Soren, here are some ideas for possible story lines with the kind of unexpected outcomes you seem to be after.
In the vein of matter and anti-matter, a sceptic and non-sceptic go head to head, each presenting the science that supports their case. The unexpected outcome is that many of your viewers, perhaps even you, will realize that the sceptic position is at least as well grounded in sound science as the non-sceptic.
Another idea would be the stories behind climategate. Have you read the emails? Not sharing data, conspiring to keep papers from being published, lying about credentials and much more… seems to be a lot of fodder there for some good stories.
Or how about the recent treatment of Lennart Bengtsson. A great example of the kind of intolerance and anti-science exhibited by non-sceptics. Certainly not the kind of behavior one would expect from a scientific community.
Review some of Donna Lafambroise’s IPCC expositions. Lots of stories there about how they’ve been infiltrated by NGO’s, how some of the scientists involved were assigned for geographic diversity and have virtally no credentials, how lead authors review there own work, Pachauri’s conflict of interest as the head of the IPCC with a strong interest in one or more green groups. Stories, stories, stories.
You could even do a story on why most these stories are unknown to most people. Why the media chooses not to tell them.
Or you could tell a story about how scientists are only human and subject to human nature like anyone. Introduce examples from this article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1 (which neverr mentions climate science) then invite Richard Lindzen or others with first hand accounts of how the atmosphere/paradigm discussed int he article has prevented valid but non-conforming papers from being published.
There are lots of stories you could tell if you approached with an open mind. Your problem with finding a good story is this: “Climate change – I believe in it. So what am I going to do? Go out and shore up my own beliefs in front of people? That doesn’t seem to have emotional power.” Why not, instead of going out to “shore up your own beliefs” you go out and challenge them – go out with the intent of proving yourself wrong.
Whether any of your current positions are altered or not, the journey involved with telling any of these stories will be much more interesting than trying to reinforce what you already believe.
Hi all, esp. Soren. Have to weigh in here from the iSeeChange perspective. A year ago this month, we did the Hot in My Backyard episode on This American. Teasing out the narrative of climate change has challenges but it’s not impossible. First, even if the weather today can’t be absolutely proven to be climate change, if that weather is indicative of the future, it’s telling. Second, climate change is not a hypothetical future, it’s happening every day, so teasing it out is like being a detective–my latest piece from Indonesia has been a roller coaster of yes, no, maybe. There are stakes, surprises, and eventually we get an answer–all the makings of great radio. Third, it’s up to us–the narrative storytellers to take on the challenge most of all. Just because it’s hard shouldn’t keep us from doing it and doing it better than everybody else. The This American Life story was written about by Dan Savage, played at meetings for Federal science agencies, and I still get emails about it. As we gear up for iSeeChange Phase 2, we’ll definitely be calling all narrative hands on deck to tell great stories.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/495/hot-in-my-backyard
A few more story ideas that might have an unexpected outcome.
Determine the effectiveness of current mitigation efforts. You could go through each of several mitigation programs (no more incandescent bulbs, new EPA regulations on coal plants ..etc) and compute how much impact each will have on our temperature. Then you can go step by step through the calculation to determine how much the US would need to reduce its CO2 emissions in order to, say reduce global temps by 1 degree C in 300 years. That answer is sure to surprise most of your audience.
Or alternative energy… How many wind turbines and/or solar panels would be needed to provide x percent of our current energy needs and what would the resulting energy cost be compared to our current power sources. How is this effort working in Germany and the UK? What frequency of grid failures should we expect after the EPA rules eliminate about 30k megawatts of current coal power and make contruction of new plants prohibitive?
Or how about a story about the special language used in science, it’s disconnect with non-scientists and the unnecessary alarm and concern that results in normal folks. The recent reporting on the study about the sudden collapse of the West Antartic Ice Shelf is a good example. The “sudden collapse” of 8% of Antarctica sounds frightening. To geologists, however, according to Dr Tom Sheahan, “Anything that happens in less than 10,000 years is “sudden,” and something happening in only 1,000 years is “instantaneous.” To geologists, the word “collapse” is appropriate for a 10,000 year process.”
Or you could dissect the methodologies of the various “97% of scientists agree that humans are contributing to climate change” studies. Many will be surprised to find that what 97% of scientists agree on IS NOT that we are primarily responsible for catastrophic warming. That the questions asked of scientists (Doran) are propagandistic, not scientific. That literature surveys (Oreskes, Anderegg, Cook) are a good way to confirm the issues raised in http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1 but not much of anything else.
Stories, stories everywhere if you’re willing to tell the ones that most other journalists aren’t. That’s where you will find unexpected outcomes. As presented, these may not fit your show’s format but I suspect that without too much effort you can find at least one story idea here that you can adapt.
Phew … ok. Here I go …
Andy: Thanks … and yes, something about cognition/belief/evidence, that’s probably the approach that could be most enlightening.
Michelle/Erica: the Maldives and Mohammed Nasheed … totally interesting, good story (though where that narrative lands and whether the narrative itself really leads to scientific insight is unclear to me). Also, as you said, it kinda by-passes the “is it real?” “how did we get here?” so I didn’t think it would meet Cassie’s challenge.
Amy: As for changing crops, I worry that most of these stories are still “will be” and “someday” … Also, again and again, these examples just aren’t tight evidence for a global trend over large timescales, so the story can always fall into the “that was just natural variability” camp (which is exactly where many people will put them).
Stephanie: Sorry to disappoint, but I’m just trying to give you the perspective of an editor who has seen a lot of pitches about this, many like the ones you are hinting at … and again, beyond numbers and astronomy, climate is a deadly combo of abstraction, uncertainty, boring-ness, and entrenched beliefs. You may think I haven’t look hard enough, but I’m trying to point out something fundamentally different about the strange nexus of this particular topic. And I’m really just talking about the kind of story I think I can make work for Radiolab. Like I said, lots of great climate pieces out there, just hard to get them to fit into our general style. Also, truthfully, Jad or one of our reporters is probably going to make me eat all these words eventually.
Ann: you’re basically my favorite person in the world.
Ty: Sorry, too much to respond to… but I will say that intrigue around the data is pretty low stakes if someone doesn’t care about the research/data/science in the first place … also, the Jonah Lehrer article … um … 1. we actually did cover that idea, and 2. really?
Soren, I’ve changed my mind about what the challenge is. New challenge: Please find the person standing on the last sliver of his/her island holding a kitten. An adorable kitten.
Also, dear god! Do we really have to tell stories about people holding kittens as their island is engulfed by rising seas to get people to care about climate change? (Could the kitten be wearing a tiny life jacket? — Just a thought.)
Julia,
There were a lot of things I really liked about the TAL episode. (I would’ve loved to hear more from the guy who charged you on the 4-wheeler). I am not saying it’s impossible to cover climate change, and I’m not trying to rip on stories that have been done by other outlets, there’s lots of coverage out there that I really like/read/listen to.
A thought from a different angle. Could one do a good radiolab story about scientific uncertainty? It’s kind of the pretend Achilles heel of the climate story. “Oh, you’re only 95% certain? Get back to me when you know something.” If you got on a plane and the pilot said, “I’m 95% certain that we’ll make it in one piece to our destination,” everyone would think that was close enough.
I love certainty stories, Erica, so I’d back that. Except for an airplane, I’m more in the 99.99% bracket for “close enough.”
I think I wasn’t completely clear (how embarrassing with a bunch of writers): at 95% certainty of reaching the destination, everyone would be off the plane in an instant.
How about a story about a person who realizes that his commitment to his work will contribute to the suffering of his children and grandchildren in a world transformed from the one in which he lives. How does he deal with the conflict between what he sees as the best work he can do, and what he knows is the best work that must be done?
During the first part of the interview, I couldn’t understand why SW was stuck in the technical aspect of the new “story” I too was in CW’s side in particular with her “awe” factor comeback. However, I have to give it to SW with his answer and yes I see it now. No one wants to have things constantly thrown in their faces…you tune it out. I get it now and I have all the confidence that journalists like you will come up with the aha angle of the story and really have it hit home to all who listen. I will be anxiously waiting for the story to be told.
I’ve been working on a novel about climate change for the last 4 yrs. It’s got beats of romance, thriller-horror, adventure, humor and sci-fi wonder. Tells a real story about real people in a real setting through fiction. I’ve been thinking awhile about this logic/emotion/storytelling conundrum. We can’t info dump or preach, must entertain – the bitter pills of truth gotta slide down easy. My husband is my climate science guy See his Ted Talk @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1y2wll2Ve8&feature=kp My novel is complete and revisions nearly finished. We’d love to talk with you about storytelling and social change.
I’m a geology grad student and a huge radiolab fan. I am also a science communicator. It is an anti story, but there are stories around it that can be very engaging.
I think there are fantastic stories to tell about how scientists know about the climate in the past. Oxygen isotope geochemistry- we can use a coral in the tropics to tell us about glacial cycles in the northern hemisphere. The difficulty of drilling an ice core and how it’s a time capsle for the atmosphere- you can actually find tiny bubbles of air that have been trapped in the ice for thousands of years. Or how we can weave together small scale environmental records held in tree rings or the stalagmites in a cave to tell us a bigger story about the environment.
It’s a bit tangential, but it’s gripping and close enough to the topic to make a point.
I think I managed to make oxygen isotopes pretty interesting in my FameLab talk at the national finals in April (it’s an international science communication competition). It’s only three minutes long if you’re interested.
http://youtu.be/ca5glmIyFHI
Twitter @geogabs
Soren, despite the book you mention, which I admittedly wrote not as a science story but as a people story (or maybe just vehicle to poke fun at Canadians with guns/Canadian dentists selling glacier water), I have to say I agree that climate per se can be pretty narratively boring. I’ve wondered if that’s one reason climate denial lives on: Everyone loves a conspiracy story while the opposite (“No, it’s real—it’s pretty basic, established science”) is rather bloodless. And wondered if projects* like this—https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larsjan/holoscenes-an-epic-public-art-performance-project—won’t take us further than journalism ever can. Meanwhile, Andy Revkin’s post above, about the work by Dan Kahan about cultural cognition, is dead on. There’s a Radiolab story therein, there really is.
*full disclosure: the director is a friend
Well, there are a lot of authoritative people saying the same thing in this comment thread, and on the whole I agree with you. But I still want to try to find the narratives in climate change. Over the last year I’ve tried to do so by telling leading climate scientists’ personal stories. Here’s one of the most recent, on Jim Hansen:
http://simpleclimate.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/the-witness-who-collided-with-government-on-climate/
I’d be interested to hear what anyone thinks of it.
I guess the silver lining to this dark cloud is that if someone does manage to find a compelling narrative for climate change then there might be a nice ‘at last!’ response from editors. Or do editors now have a confirmation bias that climate is always an anti-story?