}

'Porn weather'

2006/08/09 Carton Virto, Eider - Elhuyar Zientzia

The British organization IPPR has used harsh words to assess information on climate change. He has denounced that to talk about climate change, alarmist language is used above all, and he has described this behavior as equivalent to "climate porn", because it offers a fruitful spectacle, but ultimately because it distances the public from the problem.
According to the study conducted by IPPR, the language used to report on climate change is a language full of alarmism.

The IPPR (Institute of Public Policy Research) is presented as a reference institution that serves as a bridge between the liberal and democratic tradition, between the university and politicians, between government and civil society. However, in this case it has resisted the media, environmental groups and also the government.

The IPPR has analyzed the communication carried out by these three areas: media, environmental groups and government or official bodies. To do this, he has analyzed various newspaper and magazine articles, television, radio and press announcements, as well as various websites, including the main environmental and government groups. The conclusions of the study were collected in the Warm Words report, which was published last week, and although the conclusions correspond to the UK, I wanted to collect them in the following lines, which we also consider useful for us.

In terms of linguistic information, the British organization has identified two major apparently antagonistic behaviors: alarmism and small actions.

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Way. The first, totally pessimistic, presents climate change as a terrible, terrible and totally alien to human control. This way of acting totally excludes any possibility of carrying out effective actions, since the last message the public receives is that the problem is too big for anything.

For its part, the communication that opts for the path of small actions aims to convey the opposite message, since it puts the emphasis on the small steps that each of us can take. This way of communication is dominant in the awareness campaigns of the government and environmental groups, but the alarmist language also often portrays them: Messages like "20 things you can do to save the planet from destruction" risk neutralizing the recipient. In these cases, the epicity of the first part of the message annuls the second part. In fact, what weight can this something I do have when we talk about the destruction of the planet?

To make society aware of the problem, they recommend considering climate change as an issue that does not require debate, such as the rotation of the Earth or the water cycle.

Both linguistic forms are well represented so, according to the authors of the report, the main conclusion of the study is that the discourse on climate change is confusing, contradictory and chaotic in the UK. The report stresses that for each argument that addresses the issue from any point of view (by its nature, gravity or provenance) there is always a voice that says the opposite, and therefore the impression that the public receives is that climate change is still not considered safe, that no one really knows it.

So far nothing surprising. The issue of climate change is so, at least on the temporal scale of human life. For the consequences to be indisputable and definitive, long times and time prospects are needed, but for the moment we are not in that situation. And people know that's okay. That's why I didn't like the first recommendation of the IPPC organization to improve communication. According to them, climate change must be considered an issue that does not require debate, such as the rotation of the Earth or the water cycle. Point. I understand why he says it, I know that the goal is to escape sterile skeptical positions, but it does not serve as a basis for building a society rooted in knowledge. And little benefits scientific disclosure.

Published in the newspaper Berria.

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