The tips are organised under 12 headings:
- Manage your audience’s expectations
- Start with what you know, not what you don’t know
- Be clear about the scientific consensus
- Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’
- Be clear about the type of uncertainty you are talking about
- Understand what is driving people’s views about climate change
- The most important question for climate impacts is ‘when’, not ‘if’
- Communicate through images and stories
- Highlight the ‘positives’ of uncertainty
- Communicate effectively about climate impacts
- Have a conversation, not an argument
- Tell a human story not a scientific one.
Managing expectations is about pointing out stuff like the fallacy that because something is not known for certain doesn't mean that nothing is known. For example, it is known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it heats up the planet.
Starting with what you know means starting out with facts like the world is warming and climates are changing. And that heat waves and deluges are getting worse. Rather than starting out with whether or not the planet will heat up by 4C or more or whether we'll act and keep it to 3C or less.
Being clear about the consensus is this:
Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’ because most people don't understand what is meant by uncertainty when used in science. Most people know a bit about risk, though. People typically pay hundreds of dollars a year on insurance against events that have a much lower risk than climate change.
You can read more examples in an article by one of the authors, Adam Corner, at Shaping Tomorrow's World. And the link to the handbook is below.
Reference
Adam Corner, Stephan Lewandowsky, Mary Phillips and Olga Roberts (2015) The Uncertainty Handbook. Bristol: University of Bristol - download here.
