Monday, October 27, 2008

Global warming wake up call

No, not the kind you want...where people wake up and start to do something. This is a wake up call for those who think what's needed is more information in front of the public, or in front of our leaders.

In a fascinating experiment, highly educated and informed people were asked to respond to credible information about climate change. They failed. According to Communications Professor Matt Nisbet:

When presented with highly technical and science-laden depictions of a problem such as climate change, even our brightest minds with advanced specialized training often lack the required mental frameworks and models to accurately interpret, make sense of, and arrive at correct judgments.
What does this mean? Throwing more information at people is unlikely to result in smart responses to problems such as climate change.

Sorry for you scientists out there, the facts DO NOT speak for themselves. In fact, few things do speak for themselves in the public arena. Maybe nothing does, except free money and big, bad, scary threats that are perceived as personal, real, and immediate.

1 comment:

DogsDeserveFreedom said...

it's true - we need translators for things such as this. too bad they don't make translation dictionaries like they do for languages, eh?

Congrats on being listed on blogsofnote! That's where I found your blog. Perhaps eventually my blog will join yours on the list! :)