Written evidence submitted by the

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

London School of Economics and Political Science (COM0059)

 

  1. This submission focuses on communication about climate change to illustrate the current problems and challenges in informing and empowering the public on science-related issues that affect their prosperity and well-being. In particular, it draws attention to the excellent report on ‘Communicating climate science’ published in March 2014 by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology. Despite being based on sound evidence and presented compellingly, very few of the report’s recommendations appear to have been implemented. Indeed, there is evidence of a deterioration in the quality and quantity of communication with the public about climate change, particularly by the Government and its agencies, and that this is putting the public at greater risk of harm from impacts in the UK.

 

The importance of UK public awareness about climate change

 

  1. It should be recognised that public awareness and understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change is not just a matter of academic interest. It makes a crucial difference to the ability of the UK to manage the risks of climate change. There is already evidence, for instance, that a lack of public awareness about the impacts of climate change means that people are being exposed to greater risks of harm. For instance, the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change drew attention to the dangers arising from low public awareness in its 2014 progress report to Parliament. First, it cited a survey for the Environment Agency in 2012-13 which found that 55 per cent of people living in the floodplain believed that they were not at all at risk of flooding. The Sub-Committee concluded: “The current lack of awareness of local flood risk may be inhibiting local engagement, and willingness to contribute towards community-level flood risk management solutions”. Second, the Sub-Committee highlighted research that found that a sample of members of the UK public perceived that the incidence of heatwaves and hot weather had decreased over their lifetimes. The Sub-Committee stated: “There is very little evidence that cooling measures, in particular external measures, are being fitted to existing dwellings. This could be due to a perceived low level of current risk.
  2. The public can make better informed decisions about how to manage the risks of climate change if they are aware of the salient facts about its causes and consequences. Such information includes the patterns revealed by Met Office measurements that show, from 2000 onwards, the UK has experienced its eight warmest years, and six of its seven wettest years, since records began in 1910. Even more importantly, the UK public should know that the risk of heatwaves is increasing, as is the risk of river and surface water flooding from heavy rainfall and coastal flooding from sea level rise (Kendon et al., 2015).

 

UK public awareness of fundamental climate science

 

  1. In addition to low levels of awareness of the impacts of climate change in the UK, there is evidence that a large proportion of the public are misinformed about fundamental aspects of the science of climate change. This is particularly important to enable citizens and consumers to engage meaningfully with discussions about the best measures and policies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. For instance, it is difficult to assess the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation without understanding that they drive climate change.
  2. However, a recent survey of the representative sample of British adults carried out by ComRes for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit in September 2015 found that only 59 per cent agreed with the statement “Climate change is happening and is mainly caused by human activity”, while 28 per cent agreed that “Climate change is happening but human activity is not mainly responsible for it”. The 17th wave of the regular public attitudes tracking survey commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which was carried out in March 2016, found that only 43 per cent of a representative sample of the UK public agreed that climate change is entirely or mainly caused by human activity, with a further 41 per cent stating that climate change is partly caused by natural processes and partly caused by human activity.
  3. These findings are in stark contrast to the extremely strong consensus among scientists that climate change is happening, is driven primarily by human activities, and poses severe risks if unmanaged, as demonstrated through the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013), numerous surveys of peer-reviewed papers (eg Powell, 2016), and the verdicts of national science academies (eg Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences, 2014) and other major scientific institutions around the world.
  4. An indicator of why such a large proportion of the British public are misinformed about the science of climate change is provided by periodic polls which measure people’s knowledge of the extent of scientific consensus about the causes and consequences of climate change. For instance, the ComRes survey found that only 16 per cent agreed that “almost all”, with a further 45 per cent choosing “a majority of”, climate scientists “believe that climate change is mainly the results of human activities”.
  5. A survey by ComRes of British adults for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit in August 2014 found that only 56 per cent of the public consider themselves to be “very well informed” or “fairly well informed” about global climate change. This contrasts with the finding of an Ipsos MORI poll of a representative sample of UK adults, carried out in 2013 for the report on ‘Public Attitudes to Science 2014’ (Castell et al., 2014), that 78 per cent of people “feel relatively well informed” about climate change.

 

The role of the media

 

  1. The available evidence suggests that most of the public rely on the traditional broadcast and print media for information about climate change and other science-related issues. For instance, the report on ‘Public Attitudes to Science 2014’ found that 59 per cent cite television as one of their most regular sources of information on science, and 23 per cent cite print newspapers.
  2. There is a big difference in the way in which broadcasters and newspapers cover climate change, reflecting different interpretations of how the concepts of ‘accuracy’ and ‘balance’/’impartiality’ should be applied. Broadcast news, for instance, is required by regulation to be both accurate and impartial. Many scientists, if not the overwhelming majority, believe that broadcasters should use accuracy as the primary criterion for assessing the validity of news stories about climate change. However, broadcasters frequently show that impartiality or balance is considered to be just as important as, or even more important than, accuracy. For this reason, broadcasters have found themselves frequently criticised for airing programmes that are criticised as inaccurate for only or significantly promoting only the view of those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change. While the BBC has made numerous attempts to explain how it applies both accuracy and impartiality, there are notable examples of it broadcasting inaccurate information about climate change during news programmes (eg an interview involving Lord Lawson on the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio 4 in 2014; Burrell, 2014). Also worth noting is ‘The Daily Politics’ programme which covers climate change periodically, but rarely interviews climate scientists while its presenter, Andrew Neil, often promotes the views of climate change ‘sceptics’ (Ward, 2013a).
  3. The coverage by newspapers and magazines is more variable, with many examples of systematic misrepresentation of the science of climate change. A number of newspapers have editorial lines on climate change that to varying extents promote the views of climate change ‘sceptics’ rather than the scientific consensus. These include the ‘The Sun’, the ‘Daily Mail’, the ‘Daily Express’, ‘The Daily Telegraph’, ‘The Times’, ‘The Mail on Sunday’, and ‘The Sunday Telegraph’. While the editorial line can often be detected in the choice and style of news stories about climate change, it is often more obvious in the commentaries that are published. Geoffrey Lean, the former environment correspondent of ‘The Daily Telegraph’, has drawn attention to the disproportionate number of columnists for UK newspapers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change (Ponsford, 2015). These include Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. Mr Johnson often uses his regular column in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ to publicise the views of Piers Corbyn, who runs a small weather forecasting company but who does not believe that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing the Earth’s global mean surface temperature to rise. Mr Johnson’s error-filled columns (eg Ward, 2013b) about climate change suggest that there is an important weakness in British political governance arising from the fact that city mayors and other senior local politicians do not have scientific advisers, unlike Ministers within Government Departments.
  4. The regular stream of inaccurate and misleading information about climate change that is disseminated through newspaper columns is a result of many comment desks considering that they do not need to fact-check contributions about climate change because anything can be classified as ‘a point of view’. Indeed, newspapers often reject criticisms of inaccurate and misleading information in articles by climate change ‘sceptics’ on the grounds that they are not required to be impartial, and that the critics are trying to ‘shut down debate’ by violating the freedom of the Press and free speech. This disregard for ‘accuracy’ is reinforced through the UK’s broken system of Press regulation, including the ineffective Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ward, 2015).
  5. The quality and quantity of information of information about climate change communicated to the public about climate change by the broadcast and print media is also under threat from the loss or downgrading of science and environment reporters in the national and local broadcast and print media. However, the UK is rightly still considered to have some of the best and most influential science and environment reporters in the world.
  6. Relatively few scientists make formal complaints about inaccurate and misleading coverage about climate change by broadcasters and newspapers, and fewer still have complaints upheld.
  7. Overall, a disappointingly large amount of inaccurate and misleading information about climate change is communicated to the public by the media. The vast over-representation of viewpoints from individuals and organisations that reject the scientific consensus may largely explain why such a large proportion of the public do not realise the extent of scientific consensus and hence do not share the conclusions of the consensus.

 

The role of campaign groups

 

  1. While the media bear a large part of the responsibility for misinforming public, the role of campaigners and campaign organisations should also be recognised. In particular, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up by Lord Lawson in 2009 to campaign against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been the source of much inaccurate and misleading information about climate change, including the scientific evidence for its causes and potential consequences. Although the Charity Commission ruled in 2014 that the Foundation had breached rules governing educational charities because it was promoting only the views of climate change ‘sceptics’, the Foundation has continued to disseminate inaccurate and misleading information to the public directly through its pamphlets and website, and indirectly through its engagements with the media (Ward, 2014). There are also examples of campaign groups which support strong action on climate change misrepresenting the scientific evidence.

 

The role of scientists and researchers

 

  1. Scientists and the wider research community also share responsibility for the current situation. It is well-known that many researchers are reluctant invest time in engaging with the public directly or indirectly, not least because of perceptions that their employers and funders wish them to spend all of their time on research and teaching. This has also been compounded by a perception among many climate scientists that public discussions and media interviews tend to be hostile and polarised.

 

The role of Government and its agencies

 

  1. The Government and its agencies also bear some responsibility for the poor quality and quantity of information to which the public have access. The Select Committee’s report identified a number of shortcomings in the Government’s communications about climate change, such as the lack of a strategic approach. However, there is little evidence of an improvement even though it has been two years since the report was published. For instance, the Government’s response to the report drew attention to the creation of a “cross-government climate change communications group”. The work of this group has been invisible outside Government, and it is not obvious what impact, if any, it has had inside Government. More importantly, no Government Department or agency has assumed lead responsibility for communicating to the public about the causes and potential consequences of climate change. Indeed, cuts by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the budget of the Environment Agency has meant and end to Government funding for the regional climate change partnerships, which communicated to the public and others about local impacts, as well as the Climate Ready Service aimed at businesses.
  2. The Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change has highlighted lack of public awareness about the consequences of climate change in the UK. The Committee’s annual progress report to Parliament in June 2015 concluded: “The available evidence suggests that public awareness of how climate-related risks are changing is patchy, with greater awareness of flooding and less for heat and cold”. It recommended: “The next NAP [National Adaptation Programme], due in 2018, should contain a specific set of actions that aim to increase public awareness of climate change risks”. It added: “Lead responsibility should be assigned to a single Government Department”. However, the Government did not fully accept this recommendation in its response in October 2015, arguing that it wished to “ensure that there are strong, targeted and consistent messages” by many Government Departments, but that “identifying a single lead Government Department for public awareness-raising would be inconsistent with that objective”.
  3. Whether or not the Government should take a lead, it is clear that the UK needs a co-ordinated long-term national strategy, involving Government Departments and their agencies as well as the research community, to communicate with the public about the causes and consequences of climate change. Without such an effort, the public will not be able to take measures to manage the increasing risks that they face, nor participate in the formulation of policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

 

References

 

Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, 2014. Managing climate risks to well-being and the economy. Progress report 2014. Committee on Climate Change: London. 202p. Available at: https://documents.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Final_ASC-2014_web-version-4.pdf

 

Burrell, I., 2014. Exclusive: Today Programme criticised for giving platform to climate sceptic Lord Lawson. The Independent, 3 July. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/exclusive-today-programme-criticised-for-giving-platform-to-climate-sceptic-lord-lawson-9582970.html

 

Castell, S., Charlton, A., Clemence, M., Pettigrew, N., Pope, S., Quigley, A., Shah, J.N., & Silman, T., 2014. Public Attitudes to Science 2014. Ipsos MORI: London. 194p. https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/pas-2014-main-report.pdf

 

Committee on Climate Change, 2014. Progress in preparing for climate change: 2015 Report to Parliament. Committee on Climate Change: London. 240p. Available at: https://documents.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/6.736_CCC_ASC_Adaptation-Progress-Report_2015_FINAL_WEB_070715_RFS.pdf

 

ComRes, 2014. Climate survey. ComRes: London. 146p. Available at: http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/themes/comres/poll/ECIU_Final_Tables_8_August_2014.pdf

 

ComRes, 2015. Energy and Climate Change Survey. ComRes: London. 46p. Available at: http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ECIU_Energy-and-Climate-Change-Survey_29092015.pdf

 

Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2016. DECC Public Attitudes Tracker – Wave 17. Department of Energy and Climate Change: London. 16p. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/519488/PAT_Wave_17_Summary_of_key_findings.pdf

 

Her Majesty’s Government, 2014. Communicating climate science: Government Response to the Committee’s Eighth Report of Session 2013–14. First Special Report of Session 2014–15. House of Commons: London, 8p. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmsctech/376/376.pdf

 

Her Majesty’s Government, 2015. Government response to the Committee on Climate Change Progress on Preparing for Climate Change. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office: London. 46p. Available at: https://documents.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/DECC_CCC_Adaptation.pdf

 

House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, 2014. Communicating climate science. Eighth Report of Session 2013–14. House of Commons: London. 51p. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmsctech/254/254.pdf

 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1535p. Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Frontmatter_FINAL.pdf

 

Kendon, M., McCarthy, M., & Jevrejeva, S., 2015. State of the UK Climate 2014. Met Office: Exeter, UK. 56p. Available at: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/0/a/State_of_the_UK_climate_2014.pdf

 

Ponsford, D., 2015. Telegraph's Geoffrey Lean says he has been 'pushed out' amid rise of newspaper climate change rejectionists. Press Gazette, 1 December. Available at: http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/telegraphs-geoffrey-lean-says-he-has-been-pushed-out-amid-rise-newspaper-climate-change

 

Powell, J.L., 2016. Climate scientists virtually unanimous: anthropogenic global warming is true. Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, DOI: 10.1177/0270467616634958. 4p. Available at: http://bst.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/25/0270467616634958.full.pdf

 

Royal Society and United States National Academy of Sciences, 2014. Climate Change: Evidence & Causes. Royal Society: London. 32p. Available at: https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf

 

Ward, B., 2013a. By giving a platform to climate change sceptics, the BBC is misleading the public. New Statesman website, 24 July. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/giving-platform-climate-change-sceptics-bbc-misleading-public

 

Ward, B., 2013b. Boris Johnson's climate change "scepticism" is an embarrassment to London's scientists. New Statesman website, 23 January. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/01/boris-johnsons-climate-change-scepticism-embarrassment-londons-scientists

 

Ward, B., 2014. Climate change ‘sceptics’ breached charity rules. LSE Politics Blog, 30 September. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/climate-change-sceptics-breached-charity-rules/

 

Ward, B., 2015. UK newspaper misleads public about impacts of climate change on the Arctic. LSE Politics Blog, 2 September. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/uk-newspaper-misleads-public-about-impacts-of-climate-change-on-the-arctic/

 

April 2016