GOOD NEWS IN GLOBAL WARMING--BEYOND NAGGING

Opinion polls have shown majority belief by US residents in the scientific consensus that global warming will bring major changes. This demonstrates some success in communicating through very noisy surroundings. I suspect that the concerted efforts of the professional societies, national academies, and United Nations in generating, verifying, and communicating the consensus have much to do with this success, which may provide guidance for addressing other scientific issues. However, the success is only partial. These polls also show widespread belief that there is nothing to be done about global warming, allowing people to ignore it, a near-total failure of high-level communication. My highly unscientific classroom “polls” of students indicate that many of them believe we earth scientists are nags, to be tuned out along with parents urging their children to clean up the living room, while any public attention to science is reserved for the fun stuff going on over in biology or out in space. Coupling the positive parts of our message to the negative may be essential for successful communications, and may require that we invest a little more effort in finding the positive parts.