In what should be a game-changer for climate campaigning, the divide between \u2018weather\u2019 and \u2018climate\u2019 has been closed, as German scientist Friederike Otto and colleagues have succeeded in attributing the role of climate change to an ongoing weather event (the Great Northern Heatwave) in just three days.\u00a0 The breakthrough has added significance because the official German weather agency plans to introduce \u2018real time\u2019 climate attribution in 2019, and an EU agency expects to follow suit.\u00a0 Consequently the \u2018climate factor\u2019 should appear in daily weather reports and forecasts.<\/h2>\nThis has profound implications for public perception and will tend to normalise acceptance of climate change, as \u2018climate pollution becomes pollution of the weather\u2019.<\/h2>\nThis blog identifies three opportunities and needs for campaigners: a \u2018weather dividend\u2019 in expanding the base, creating crises of responsibility for corporates and politicians, and pivoting public psychology from \u2018giving up\u2019 to demanding action, drawing on attribution itself.<\/h2>\nIt proposes new weather indices for comparing the polluted to the unpolluted climate, for averages and events, and a climate version of the Atomic Clock.<\/h2>\nIt warns that fossil-fuel lobbyists will try to keep the climate factor out of weather reports.<\/h2>\n
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This blog identifies three opportunities and needs for campaigners: a \u2018weather dividend\u2019 in expanding the base, creating crises of responsibility for corporates and politicians, and pivoting public psychology from \u2018giving up\u2019 to demanding action, drawing on attribution itself.<\/h2>\nIt proposes new weather indices for comparing the polluted to the unpolluted climate, for averages and events, and a climate version of the Atomic Clock.<\/h2>\nIt warns that fossil-fuel lobbyists will try to keep the climate factor out of weather reports.<\/h2>\n
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It warns that fossil-fuel lobbyists will try to keep the climate factor out of weather reports.<\/h2>\n
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Friederike Otto<\/em><\/p>\n This change came on 27 July, after a team led by German scientist Friederike Otto spent three days working as fast as they could to analyse weather data from the unprecedented heatwave gripping Europe and much of the Northern Hemisphere, against climate models. They announced at \u2018World Weather Attribution<\/a>\u2019, that the ongoing heatwave had been made twice as likely to occur, due to human-made climate change.<\/p>\n So rather than taking months or years to look back at past trends or individual extreme weather events, as many previous \u2018attribution\u2019 studies have done, Otto\u2019s team managed to do so in near-enough \u2018real time\u2019.\u00a0 Three days is a short enough time period for major weather events to still be playing out and noticeable to the public, media and even politicians.<\/p>\n This is a game-changer for communications about climate change, or it should be.\u00a0 In effect Otto has closed the gap between \u2018climate\u2019 and \u2018weather\u2019.\u00a0 Climate-change is joining the mainstream conversation, not as an \u2018if\u2019 but as a reality.<\/p>\n Dr Otto<\/a> is an Associate Professor in the Climate Research Programme at the Oxford University Environmental Change Institute.\u00a0 She is one of the world\u2019s leading experts in saying whether the world\u2019s weather is being driven by climate change [aka \u2018attribution\u2019 science].\u00a0 In this case the answer was \u201cyes\u201d by odds of 2:1.<\/p>\n Also with admirable speed, the Science journal Nature<\/em> published a brilliant article<\/a> by Quirin Schiermeier on 30 July, explaining Otto\u2019s achievement and attribution science. Ironically many of the scientists working on these projects \u2013 the climate equivalent of rapid response in disease control or emergency medicine \u2013 have been doing so in their spare time with very few resources, although there are some signs that this may be about to change.\u00a0\u00a0 Schiermeier (Nature<\/em>\u2019s German correspondent) also reports that \u2018with Otto\u2019s help, Germany\u2019s national weather agency is preparing to be the first in the world to offer rapid assessments of global warming\u2019s connection to particular meteorological events\u2019.<\/p>\n As a Brit who has worked on climate change since 1988, I simultaneously feel embarrassment that it takes the German weather service to do this, working with a British based German climate scientist, and (on behalf of the planet), gratitude.\u00a0 Thank goodness for the Germans.<\/p>\n It\u2019s always been the case that people\u2019s direct experience of weather plays a role<\/a> in their response to any mention of \u2018climate change\u2019.\u00a0 In 1988 Jim Hansen of NASA famously gave influential evidence<\/a> of climate change to Congress, in the middle of a heatwave. \u00a0His facts and figures showed a progressive temperature increase in line with climate modelling of the effect of CO2 emissions but his declaration that he was \u201899% certain\u2019 it was \u2018already happening\u2019, had much greater impact because it felt hot.\u00a0 A problem with global warming feels more compelling if you feel hot: it\u2019s a salient problem, \u2018front of mind\u2019, and our feelings and intuitions influence our \u2018rationality\u2019.<\/p>\n Of course it\u2019s not only feeling hot or cold which influences our responses to \u2018climate change\u2019 as an \u2018issue\u2019. \u00a0Because it is conceived by use of data and computer models, \u2018climate\u2019 has always been a \u2018Track 2<\/a>\u2019 issue, requiring analytical thinking, weighing of probabilities, faith in the scientific method, and, when it comes to responses in terms of changing how we live and work, a sufficient sense of self-agency to embrace change.<\/p>\n Where these factors have been lacking, many people (including politicians) have avoided thinking about such a knotty and apparently \u2018not yet\u2019 problem by resorting to what Daniel Kahneman calls \u2018substitution\u2019: replacing a hard question with an easy one, such as \u201cdo scientists agree?\u201d or \u201cdo scientists say it\u2019s happening now?\u201d, or \u201cdo I want to keep driving my [fossil fuelled] car?\u201d.\u00a0 This flips the \u2018issue\u2019 back into everyday \u2018Track 1<\/a>\u2019 world, where decisions are driven by intuitive, feelings unconsciously shaped by heuristics, values and framing.\u00a0 That has resulted in going on doing what feels normal and familiar on the one hand, and in climate scepticism on the other (denial being a psychological free-pass from having to engage with a new reality).\u00a0 You can see the effect of values on climate attitudes in 15 countries in this blog<\/a> and report<\/a>, based on surveys for Greenpeace International.<\/p>\n Manipulating such reflexes and perceptions to undermine climate action has been easy, starting even before Frank Luntz\u2019s notorious 2002 memo<\/a> to pro-fossil fuel US Republicans, pointing out that they did not need to win the argument<\/a> about whether climate change existed, only to sustain the debate.<\/p>\n Given the way science works, a debate amongst scientists is almost inevitable on any topic, so the fossil fuel lobby were gifted a cheap way to sustain disbelief<\/a>.<\/p>\n Above, from Sustaining Disbelief: Media Pollism and Climate Change<\/a><\/em> (2007)<\/p>\n The UN system set up to respond to the climate change threat put climate scientists in pole position through the IPCC<\/a> and UNFCCC<\/a> (Climate Convention), and they dominated \u2018messaging\u2019 about it. \u00a0Mostly out of naivety, many tried to communicate the need for political and social action by explaining the science.<\/p>\n In 2005 I put that at the top of a list of reasons for why \u2018Climate Campaigning is Difficult<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 Not a lot had changed by 2015, when in an article for the UNA \u2018Getting the Message Right<\/a>\u2019, I grumbled that climate scientists had \u2018proved fabulously ill-equipped\u2019 as messengers, and \u2018seem to think they can ignore even the most basic rules of public communications\u2019:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fortunately many more members of the scientific \u2018climate community\u2019 are now applying themselves to the task of improving communications, and thinking about what\u2019s needed to get an effect, rather than just getting their next publication out. \u00a0\u00a0For example, Earth Sciences Professor Chris Rapley at UCL chairs a Commission<\/a> which brings together natural scientists, social scientists including psychologists like Kris de Meyer of Kings College who interestingly studies why people who are wrong think they are right<\/a>, and communications practitioners from advertising and elsewhere, even sometimes campaigners like me, on this agenda.<\/p>\n Becoming at least aware that there are proven processes for effective public communication, is a first step, and scientists like Otto have started talking in communication terms.\u00a0 She told Schiermeier \u201cframing and communicating attribution questions is a real challenge\u201d.\u00a0 He wrote:<\/p>\n \u2018Otto says a rapid attribution service is needed because questions about the role of climate change are regularly asked in the immediate aftermath of extreme weather events. \u201cIf we scientists don\u2019t say anything, other people will answer that question not based on scientific evidence, but on whatever their agenda is. So if we want science to be part of the discussion that is happening, we need to say something fast\u201d\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Some scientists, added Schiermeier, \u2018might feel uncomfortable if weather forecasters announce results before work has gone through peer review\u2019. \u00a0But he notes that Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at Edinburgh University, points out that the science of attribution has advanced rapidly and \u2018would benefit from being linked to operational weather prediction\u2019. \u201cIt can be really useful to have results quickly available for event types we understand reasonably well, such as heatwaves,\u201d she told him. \u00a0Or as Otto put it: \u201cYou don\u2019t need to peer review the weather forecast\u201d.<\/p>\n Ever since climate change became an issue it has been obvious that what\u2019s on the daily weather forecast, influences public perceptions.\u00a0 Hardly anyone talks to climate scientists but nearly everybody sees weather forecasts, and many TV forecasters are local or even national celebrities.\u00a0 So far, we don\u2019t have daily climate forecasts but we do have daily weather forecasts. Therefore what media weather people say matters, not just because they have our attention but because they give meaning to the weather, and climate.<\/p>\n Two ways weather meets climate are when \u2018weather forecasters\u2019 relate day to day weather to past averages, and when they interpret \u2018extreme events\u2019.<\/p>\n While there are cultural differences between nations, in countries like the UK, \u2018good weather\u2019 is usually taken to be synonymous with it being warm and dry.\u00a0 Hence the \u2018good weather\u2019 frame in Britain, and probably many other temperate northern countries, contains the elements \u2018warm\u2019, \u2018sunny\u2019 and \u2018dry\u2019.<\/p>\n So weather forecasters in Britain frequently describe warmer, drier or sunnier days as \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018better\u2019 and describe departures from the long term or past averages as \u201cbetter than expected\u201d or \u201cgood for the time of year\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0So a hot summer day is celebrated, and so is a warmer than \u2018normal\u2019 winter day.\u00a0 You do not need to be a cognitive psychologist to see that this frame tends to confound any claim that warmer, hotter weather is a bad sign.\u00a0 For decades it was an uphill struggle to interpret \u2018global warming\u2019 as a bad thing, in countries like Britain.<\/p>\n Confusingly, the most obvious units of both weather forecasts and of global climate models are the same \u2013 degrees of temperature – yet they have very different meanings.\u00a0 People are used to seeing TV weather charts with a range of temperatures of say 5 \u2013 10.C over one day or within a week, and it makes little difference aside from the warmer ones being welcomed as something to look forward to, or signalling that you might need to \u2018wrap up\u2019 or \u2018put on sun cream\u2019, or that you are \u2018lucky\u2019 to live in one of the warmer spots. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With this framing, it makes no intuitive sense to be alarmed about a 1.5 \u2013 2C rise as a disaster and 3-4.C as probably a catastrophe, just because it is applied to global averages.\u00a0 Consequently campaigns and \u2018scientific\u2019 announcements to that effect, are simply filtered out, discarded as George Lakoff might say, because they do not \u2018fit the frame\u2019 [of warmer = better].<\/p>\n The conventional answer to this problem from the meteorological establishment and media such as the BBC is to occasionally introduce an \u2018expert\u2019 voice such as a Science Correspondent, usually when there is a report from the IPCC or UNFCCC to talk about, or if weather extremes make the news and advocates of climate-action are asking attribution questions.\u00a0 They then try to \u2018square the circle\u2019 by resorting to what has become a mantra along the lines of \u201cwhile you cannot attribute any single event to climate change, scientists say [this is consistent with what we may expect in the future] [this is the sort of event we may see more of in the future as\u2026]\u201d.<\/p>\n Repeated over and over these amount to raising the question \u201cis this climate change?\u201d and then dismissing it.\u00a0 Question-dismissal, question-dismissal, question-dismissal \u2026 etc.<\/p>\n So such qualifications decode as reassurance; it\u2019s expected, it\u2019s not climate change, it\u2019s not immediate, and \u201cthere are a lot of if\u2019s but\u2019s and maybes\u201d: uncertainty.\u00a0 \u00a0Scientists taking this approach may think that listeners will realise that some<\/em> of the events or part<\/em> of the drivers behind events are driven by climate change but if the out-take from each one is that it is not<\/em> attributed to climate change, the overall effect is \u2018climate change isn\u2019t affecting our weather\u2019.<\/p>\n Weather forecasters sometimes use a different frame, one of \u2018normal\u2019 or \u2018abnormal\u2019 weather [as opposed to better\/worse = hotter\/ colder] but even then, they usually do so by reference to statistical averages, and very few of the population or media or politicians understand averages in an analytical way.<\/p>\n Explicitly saying \u201cthis weather is abnormal\u201d could have a very different impact but in their Track 2 professional world, weather presenters and meteorologists are aware of the backlash they might experience if they appeared to say something \u2018not scientifically accurate\u2019. \u00a0So even when weather has become so extreme that their audience is already talking about it, there is still a residual reflex to play it down.\u00a0 For example by saying that although it\u2019s the biggest X for decades, it did happen once before at some distant point in the past.\u00a0 \u00a0Although that\u2019s not exactly \u2018scientific\u2019, it is arcane knowledge and sounds expert.<\/p>\n As a result of all this, far from being a driver of public concern about the reality of climate change, for many years most media weather forecasts have acted as a political analgesic.<\/p>\n Trying to squeeze a climate change perspective into a TV weather forecast is obviously a fraught business.\u00a0 Some who have tried, have got into a tangle as they try to explain probabilities and intermediate factors like large scale weather systems (jet stream, arctic vortex, oscillations etc).\u00a0 One who has had some success is John Morales<\/a>, award winning meteorologist for NBC in Miami Florida.\u00a0 Morales (@John MoralesNBC6) has even taken the fight for scientifically realistic interpretation of the weather and climate to Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n In June Morales said on twitter<\/a> that he and a handful of other TV meteorologists had been relating weather to climate change for years and \u2018curiously\u2019 were considered \u2018mavericks\u2019, but now there is a \u2018groundswell\u2019 of many more doing the same thing.<\/p>\n Morales may soon be getting reinforcements.\u00a0 Schiermeier now reports that the German weather service is planning more or less immediate climate attribution analyses in 2019 or 2020, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, UK, is also planning a pilot pan-EU scheme in 2020.\u00a0 Presumably this will leave TV weather presenters with little excuse for prevarication over climate change.<\/p>\n In my view, what they really need to turn the impact of climate change on weather into something that is news-friendly, is an index, or maybe more than one.\u00a0 The \u2018cognitive ease\u2019 of an index is why news services routinely report stock market indices, even though most of the audience has little real idea what the Dow Jones or FTSE 500 actually means, and it\u2019s questionable what they say about the \u2018real economy\u2019.\u00a0 In the news room, economics and business are held to be important, and this is a quick and easy way of covering them.\u00a0 Likewise, the Saffir-Simpson 1 \u2013 5 category scale for Hurricanes makes them a lot more \u2018newsworthy\u2019 because it makes them easier to report.<\/p>\n The essence of human-induced climate change is that polluting the air with greenhouse gases raises the temperature of the atmosphere.\u00a0 The objective (Art 2) of the Climate Convention<\/a> includes:<\/p>\n Relating ecosystem (and farming) tolerance to rates and total amounts of change is where target figures like 1.5C or 2.0C in the C21st come from<\/a>, compared to the 1961-1990 average.<\/p>\n So for its\u2019 benchmark, any such Climate Attribution Index should relate to the \u2018unpolluted\u2019 atmosphere, when it comes to temperature records.<\/p>\n A couple of autumns ago, dismayed by Halloween temperatures hugely above the average of the previous 30 years, and with midsummer flowers blooming and insect pollinators buzzing around at a time nature should be shutting down for winter, I suggested<\/a> a \u2018UTA\u2019 benchmark:<\/p>\n This won\u2019t prevent people experiencing the shifting baseline syndrome<\/a>: my children can\u2019t remember the frosty autumn mornings I experienced as a child because they weren\u2019t born then but it could \u2018bake in\u2019 the destination-objective of returning the atmosphere to an unpolluted state, which presumably is what climatologists and meteorologists actually want to happen, within the public climate conversation.<\/p>\n Weather interpreters also need a scale for events \u2013 expressing the \u2018amount\u2019 of Human-Induced-Climate-Change\u00a0 attributed to an event [HICC index or maybe Hansen Units or Otto Units?].<\/p>\n It might help if climate scientists also had something like the \u2018Atomic Clock\u2019 which was some sort of \u2018attribution\u2019 index reset every once in a while, so anyone trying to \u2018take the temperature\u2019 of the issue could say \u201cwith the XXXX set at YY, it is \u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know for sure but as they see the reality of climate change crashing weather all over the world, some campaigners may be wondering where next to throw their efforts.\u00a0 One thing they could do is to help the climate attribution community navigate the process of bringing out the truth in terms the public can understand.<\/p>\n Otto\u2019s work creates three openings: \u00a0first, to activate the \u2018weather dividend\u2019 in terms of public engagement, \u00a0second the need and opportunity to hold politicians and corporates to account over climate change, and third the need to pivot the psychology from \u2018giving up\u2019 to demanding action.<\/p>\n For a\u00a0 long time surveys have tended to find that more people say they have noticed the \u2018climate changing\u2019 than that they \u2018believe in climate change\u2019.\u00a0 Two of the statements tested in the 2011-2015 series of surveys for Greenpeace International mentioned earlier were \u00a0\u2018I have noticed that the climate seems to be changing<\/em>\u2019 (in eight countries) and \u2018Climate change \u2013 I don\u2019t believe in it<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n A majority of people in all eight countries agreed they had noticed the climate changing (see more detail here<\/a>), and an outright majority in every country except the UK and Australia \u2018strongly\u2019 agreed.\u00a0 (It would be interesting to ask the question again in Australia and the UK as these were surveyed in 2014.)<\/p>\n This can be compared to results for the statement: \u2018climate change \u2013 I don\u2019t believe in it<\/em>\u2019, (details here<\/a>).<\/p>\n The chart shows the proportion who agreed strongly or slightly that they had noticed the climate changing, and the proportion who were \u2018active believers\u2019 in climate change, in that they slightly or strongly disagreed with \u2018climate change \u2013 I don\u2019t believe in it<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 In every country, more people \u2018have noticed\u2019 climate change rather than \u2018believe in it\u2019, and these can add up to more than 100% because some of the people who profess not to believe in it, have also \u2018noticed it\u2019.<\/p>\n This apparently irrational response is because the two questions are not answered analytically \u2013 hardly any of the public will have conducted or studied a \u2018climatology\u2019 of long term data or are experts on \u2018detection\u2019 of a human made climate signal \u2013 but intuitively (using Kahneman\u2019s System 1 not System 2).\u00a0 Emotional reflexive rationality, not analytical reflective rationality.<\/p>\n Although asked if they \u2018have noticed\u2019 the climate<\/em> changing, this equates to \u2018weather<\/em>\u2019, or short term or easily recall-able or \u2018available<\/a>\u2019 experiences or events, including things like changes in wildlife and plants in the garden or at work, \u2018unseasonal\u2019 weather, and social conversations about them.\u00a0 These are in the realm of personal experience and are probably cued by being asked if you have \u201cnoticed\u201d something.<\/p>\n Especially in countries where \u2018climate change\u2019 was polarised as a political issue, the \u2018belief\u2019 question cues people to ask themselves \u201cam I one of those<\/em> type of people?\u201d: a political\/social identity test, and answer on that basis.\u00a0 This is one reason why the response not only varies in degree between countries but is strongly values-influenced in a way which is highly consistent across<\/em> countries.<\/p>\n Above: some Values Modes differences showing indexes only (for further explanation see here<\/a>).\u00a0 Warm colours indicate strongly significant espousal\/ agreement with the statement.\u00a0 The overall difference between the two statement responses is most marked in the Prospector \u2018Golden Dreamers\u2019 and the Settler \u2018Brave New Worlds\u2019.\u00a0 These people are more climate sceptic than the population average but do<\/em> tend to agree they have noticed the climate changing.<\/p>\n It can therefore be expected that if weather forecasts and discussion of extreme weather events begin to include a climate-change factor, there will be an overall increase in agreement with propositions which are predicated on climate change as a reality and this will be greatest in the Prospectors and Settlers, especially GD and BNW.<\/p>\n Seeing as many surveys show these people are the centre of support (although not the only support) for authoritarian policies, Trump<\/a>, Brexit<\/a> and right-wing parties<\/a>, what appears in the weather forecast as a reality, has political significance.\u00a0 This will not be lost on the paid-for climate sceptic lobby who can be expected to try and keep the climate factor out of the weather reports and forecasts.<\/p>\n The effect of routinely including the climate factor in weather reports and forecasts, will be to normalise it, and Settlers in particular self-identify as \u2018normal people\u2019 and thus shift opinions and behaviours to stay in line with norms.\u00a0 Or as this previous Newsletter<\/a><\/em> noted, \u2018like cancer and smoking and the abolition of slavery, an issue, a contested topic, has to mature into \u2018social fact\u2019 for wholesale change on it to be acceptable\u2019.<\/p>\n Campaigners can therefore expect a \u2018dividend\u2019 in growing and broadening the base of acceptance of climate change, when the climate-factor appears in \u2018the weather\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Climate pollution is becoming pollution of the weather.<\/p>\n Holding Politicians and Corporates to Account over Climate Change<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This is mainstream ongoing work for climate campaigns but with the gap between the changing climate and changing weather now disappearing, it too can be re-appraised.<\/p>\n When Dawn Stover published an article \u2018Global heat wave: an epic TV news fail\u2019 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists<\/a> on July 19, a senior scientist asked me why with all the evidence of climate change in progress, there was so little media and political reaction.\u00a0 My answer was:<\/p>\n \u201cObvious contributing factors:<\/em><\/p>\n Beyond that the other explanations are worse, eg shifting baseline psychology\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Well Otto has changed the second factor significantly, for which she deserves some sort of medal but I was being a bit glib: there is another factor, namely no perceived crisis of responsibility.\u00a0 Politically, Teresa May is in ongoing crisis over Brexit: will she fail to deliver, or fail to hang on to her job? Likewise Trump has a permanent crisis monkey on his back because of unresolved inquiries into his Russian links and other allegations but is only in real trouble if his supporters turn against him.<\/p>\n In truth the fates of Brexit, May and Trump are inconsequential compared to the onslaught of climate change but media and the political classes feel no crisis from climate change.\u00a0 For most such \u2018leaders\u2019 it\u2019s only a political problem, and at that principally a presentational one, on the main plenary days of COPs of the UNFCCC.\u00a0 Their reputations, jobs, status and freedom do not depend upon resolving it because as yet, they are not expected to take responsibility, and feel no political pain from it getting worse: no blame, no shame.<\/p>\n I wrote about this in 2013 in \u2018Why We Need Climate Crises To Avoid Catastrophe\u2019<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0It began:<\/p>\n It went on to argue that we need to complement existing efforts to hold politicians to account in relation to global climate change (eg by activist lawyer groups), by also mobilising affected domestic<\/em> political constituencies to demand that leaders keep them safe from local<\/em> climate change.\u00a0 Otto\u2019s work, and that of other attribution scientists, makes that much more feasible.\u00a0 Same goes for corporations like oil companies.<\/p>\n It ended:<\/p>\n The Psychology of Not Giving Up<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When I got sent a link to Schiermeier\u2019s article in Nature<\/a> I forwarded it to a friend who is a long-time climate campaigner in Greenpeace.\u00a0 She wrote back: \u2018<\/strong>Thanks for that – good work!\u00a0 Just wonder how we stop people switching off when they finally get how serious it is\u2019.\u00a0 Which is of course a very good point.<\/p>\n It seems to me that there are two things campaigns and advocates need to achieve, if an era of climate-change-polluted-weather is to motivate action to clean up the atmosphere rather than to ignore it or give up.\u00a0 First, to fully desocialise fossil fuels, and second, to give meaning to climate-attribution of weather events in terms of the difference we could make.<\/p>\n We need to desocialise fossil fuels so it becomes shameful to use them.\u00a0 The same goes for other climate change pollution of course but fossil fuels are the most egregious factor.<\/p>\n This should not be done by universalist ethical criticism (Political Correctness which can lead to values polarisation) but is best founded on the one hand, in appeals to morality, to honour, duty, family and Jonathan Haidt\u2019s six moral \u2018modules\u2019 or \u2018foundations<\/a>\u2019. (Care\/harm, Fairness\/cheating, Loyalty\/betrayal, Authority\/subversion, Sanctity\/degradation, and Liberty\/oppression).\u00a0 These resonate most strongly with the GD\/ Settler Values Modes discussed earlier, which is where the greatest work needs to be done.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The Pope is an example of a moral authority heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n The Save Kansas Project reported in the New York Times in 2010<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Plus on the other hand, it needs to be founded in social proof: which means qualitatively and quantitatively amplifying the signal that living \u2018carbon free\u2019 is right and normal.\u00a0 The Save Kansas project<\/a> did this nearly a decade ago: a predominantly Settler community took to building wind farms, side-stepping their existing climate-scepticism, and finding justification in a sense of community benefit and loyalty, and freedom from reliance on foreign oil.\u00a0 Much more effort should go into making the transition from fossil fuels visible, obvious and socially approved of, and (especially for Prospectors) a positive signal of success and prosperity.<\/p>\n Innovative politicians and campaigners should also make the right to be able to live a climate-blameless life (accessible, affordable etc) into a political and corporate issue. Demanding politicians and corporates make this possible, is a key step in driving out fossil fuels. \u00a0We need politicians to compete to get rid of fossil fuels, not form a consensus that it should be done and then give it little priority.<\/p>\n A social norm is defined not just by broad acceptance but by the social sanction that follows when it is broken.\u00a0 Those cheating, betraying, degrading or subverting our societies and children\u2019s future need to be held to account.\u00a0 Campaign NGOs might think about how they can help organise or maybe more likely catalyse powerful and directed expressions of social disapproval against wanton climate pollution, and moral appeals to transgressors to change their ways.\u00a0 \u00a0Remember that every time you hear a spokesperson or \u2018expert\u2019 trundled out in the media who says \u201ceveryone\u201d is a bit to blame for climate change, their agenda is usually to avoid a focus on those who are a very great deal to blame.<\/p>\n Nobody likes being blamed.\u00a0 Living \u2018carbon free\u2019 or being part of the disapproval, enables people to exempt themselves from blame.\u00a0 This in turn makes it possible to hear about climate change driving dangerous and bad weather, and be able to accept and relay that news, without feeling the need to stifle or deny it.<\/p>\n For something which has been \u2018normal\u2019, such as using oil, gas or coal, getting there requires plenty of step-by-step disapproval: think of smoking (see Campaign Strategy Newsletter 26<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n We need to relate news of weather events attributed to climate change (bad news) to the difference we could make to extreme weather and impacts if we cut out carbon pollution ie fossil fuels (good news). Put the difference in terms of weather: eg it would cut the excess of such extreme floods by x%.<\/p>\n This is what PR people sometimes call a negative-positive story.\u00a0 We give a sense of agency, the difference we could make, and avoidability, not despondency and despair.\u00a0 This also feeds the scandal equation<\/a>: if a disaster is avoidable then it is scandalous, and someone is to blame.<\/p>\n Both of these steps enable people to avoid cognitive dissonance on hearing that their weather is being pollution-driven.\u00a0 They give people something positive to say when a disastrous impact occurs: enabling disapproval of others who are to blame, and equipping them with a way to express the solution.<\/p>\n Friederike Otto is not the only scientist working in this field but she has done the world a favour.\u00a0 Campaigners should seize the opportunity she has created.<\/p>\n The heatwave has also brought climate change and weather together in popular perception.\u00a0 On 25 July, two days before Otto\u2019s report and five days before Steinmeier\u2019s article in Nature, Britain\u2019s most popular daily newspaper The Sun<\/em>\u00a0 had splashed a global temperature map across it\u2019s front page, with the headline \u2018The World\u2019s on Fire\u2019.<\/p>\n The Sun 25 July tweeted by Mark Campanale @CampanaleMark\u00a0 https:\/\/twitter.com\/CampanaleMark<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Veteran environmental journalist Mike McCarthy spotted it at his local news-stand and wrote in The Guardian<\/em><\/a> a week later, \u201cI nearly choked on my KitKat* when I read that\u201d.\u00a0 This is because the Murdoch-owned Sun has long been regarded as a firm part of the \u2018climate sceptic\u2019 tendency, so the coverage in The Sun<\/em> was, as Mike said, a \u2018historic shift\u2019.<\/p>\n McCarthy\u2019s article was headed\u00a0 \u2018Was this the heatwave that finally ended climate denial?\u2019\u00a0 Probably not but the media will be cooling on climate denial, and Otto\u2019s work makes that end a whole lot more possible.<\/p>\n (*For non-UK readers: KitKat is a chocolate bar brand owned by Nestle and popular in Britain).<\/p>\n ends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Rose\u00a0 chris@campaignstrategy.co.uk Long blog – download it as a pdf here In what should be a game-changer for climate campaigning, the divide between \u2018weather\u2019 and \u2018climate\u2019 has been closed, as German scientist Friederike Otto and colleagues have succeeded in … Continue reading An important if under-reported connection was made last month, which should be a watershed in the strategies of campaigns against climate change.\u00a0 Until now, weather has come with added climate change but it\u2019s been missing from weather-forecasts and reports.\u00a0 From now on TV-weather can come with an identified percentage of climate change.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/attribution-graphic.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThank Goodness for the Germans<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Nature-art-attribution-2018.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMaking The Weather<\/strong><\/h3>\n
“Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific
\ncommunity. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly \u2026 Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”<\/em><\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/sustaining.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u2018If a scientist refers three times to uncertainties, people conclude that she or he is uncertain. Would you act on uncertain advice? Well, no. When a research scientist is asked what needs to happen next, and she or he says \u2018more research\u2019, do you conclude it\u2019s time for action? Well, no\u2019.<\/em><\/h3>\n
\u201cYou Don\u2019t Need To Peer Review The Weather Forecast\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/weather-house.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen \u2018Climate\u2019 Meets \u2018Weather\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Weather Forecasts as a Political Analgesic<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/John-Morales.jpg\")
<\/p>\nJohn Morales of NBC<\/em><\/h3>\n
We Need Climate Indices For Weather<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Temperature Pollution\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u2018stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.\u00a0 Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change \u2026\u2019<\/em><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/UNFCCC-art-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/hot-Halloween-blog.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n\u2018An <\/em>Unpolluted Temperature Average<\/em> from before the anthropogenic (human pollution) signal really kicked in ?\u00a0 Then we could talk about Polluted Temperatures and Unpolluted Temperatures.\u00a0 Which would be more honest.\u2019<\/em><\/h3>\n
What Next ?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Weather Dividend<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Have-noticed-climate-changing-chart.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Have-noticed-v-active-belief-chart.jpg\")
<\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/VMs-Have-noticed-v-active-belief-chart.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Dawn-Stover-epic-fail-art.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
\u2018Here are three fundamental political truths relevant to many campaigns: first, politicians aspire to be in charge and remain in charge. Second, it is universally recognized that the first duty of government is to maintain public safety – from the integrity of the nation down to the safety of the individual. Third, little sharpens the political mind like being held responsible.<\/em><\/h3>\n
The climate is now plainly lurching into a state of dangerous extremes: record floods are followed by record droughts, storms, heat waves and fires. Seasons are warping and nature, farming and cultures are impacted. Livelihoods and lives are threatened.\u00a0 People have noticed it is changing, and they don\u2019t like it \u2026<\/em><\/h3>\n
Yet the impacts created by the new climate extremes tend to remain \u2018disasters\u2019 not crises. <\/em>Why? Because there is no crisis of responsibility\u2019.<\/em><\/h3>\n
\u2018With climate impacts perceived to be occurring in real time, the politics of climate can be real-time, personal and local too. What would be the bigger political crisis, the fate of future generations, or a food shortage tomorrow? The future extinction of a third of the world\u2019s biodiversity or a housing crisis this year?<\/em><\/h3>\n
Once they have a crisis to deal with, politicians will start to look more seriously and more quickly, for the most effective solutions\u2019.<\/em><\/h3>\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Save-kansas-NYT.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/The-Worlds-on-Fire-Front-Page-of-The-Sun-25-July-2018.png\")
<\/p>\n