Changing minds takes time

You may remember my piece of Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent summary of a peer reviewed scientific paper on the link between climate change and hurricanes. For those of you who don't a simply summary is that I am with science and Michael Bloomberg in being as certain as I can be that climate change will increase the ferocity and number of hurricanes that make landfall, with what can only be negative consequences for us.

It will not surprise you to know that I  possess no ability to influence public opinion anywhere in the world (yet) and as such while I find the results of a recent poll of Americans on climate change infuriating I wasn't exactly expecting the post-Sandy world to have changed when it comes to what is perhaps science’s hardest issue to communicate since evolution.

Look at the numbers. The poll (published in early December 2012 by Quinnipiac University) consulted a sample group of 1,949 registered American voters concluded that:

37% of voters think that Hurricane Sandy was a result of climate change.

51% of voters think the two are not related.

Of the same sample group, 66% of people are 'very' or 'somewhat concerned' about climate change.

The middle number is the most worrying. Hurricane Sandy was caused by a cocktail of environmental factors including extremely low barometric pressure and the collision of the original hurricane with a second storm moving east over America. Technically its causes (or direct causes at least) were the similar to every other hurricane. Climate change, particularly in regard to elevated ocean surface temperature acted as what George Lackoff has described as a 'systematic cause', a less obvious cause working through a network of more direct ones. In other words you could argue that the 63% of people who don't think Sandy was caused by climate change or are undecided are in at least some sense correct. It is the 51% of the population who refuse to believe, in the face of evidence, that the two are unrelated that is galling.

It isn't particularly complicated science. Anyone who has, for example, studied geography past the age of thirteen will probably have learned that hurricanes need a very specific sea surface temperature to form (26.5 degrees Celsius to be precise) and that for a hurricane to remain strong and continue to grow sea temperatures beneath it need to remain high (this is the reason hurricanes start to die out after they achieve landfall, they’re running on an empty tank). They will probably also know that climate change is resulting in raised sea surface temperatures. On the most basic levels then it isn't hard to see there might be a link, and yet 51% of voters in the country that leads the free world have missed a trick. Why?

Well of course not everyone has studied geography or even science at a high school level and even those who have may well have been taught differently to a pupil in school now. Go back to the nineties and anyone going through school would have been exposed to a very different grasp of climate change that the one possessed by science today.

You can also blame politics. The survey showed that 55% of registered Democrats and 30% of independents believed in a link opposed to 14% of Republicans. Stereotypically the Republican Party is often viewed as 'anti-environment' and it certainly seems that which political party you follow influences your view on climate change in relation to hurricanes.

Of course the main reason is still science's inability to communicate.  There is a store of convincing scientific evidence supporting climate change and while this may be enough for the scientific community persuading the wider public is a far more arduous task. We (scientist and campaigners) need to make the case for climate change as a whole crystal clear, give it figureheads and spokespeople and most importantly of all stand up to the sceptics who, to put it bluntly, are lying to people often because of their own vested interests. I am not suggesting that people with serious scientific concerns about the evidence for climate change should be ignored, that undermines the principles of open debate that science functions on, but I would challenge anyone to find a qualified climate scientist who is a sceptic and not also funding by the energy industry. Arguments that everything from sun spots to extended natural variability are causing climate change also need to be refuted and refuted publicly at that.

Once people are 'clued up' on climate change then the rest will follow. Inroads have been made, with the 66% of voters now concerned about climate change a 12% rise on the figure from 2009. The more people we can convince that climate change really is here to stay the more people we can educate on its effects, from increased hurricane strength to drought and everything in between. But changing minds takes time, which is the one commodity we are fast running out of.