Loveland Magazine is one of theĀ 400 news outlets worldwide, with a combined audience of over 2 billion people “Covering Climate Now”, a global journalism initiative committed to bringing more and better coverage to the defining story of our time.
The initiative, was co-founded by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review
Mihaela Manova is “Covering Climate Now” in Loveland, Ohio as an editor for Loveland Magazine
If youāre confused what the ācircular economyā is, or what it means for a company to go ānet-zero,ā youāre far from alone. Thereās a big mismatch between what scientists, journalists, and activists are saying and what the public understands. This is hardly a new problem, but itās yet another obstacle to getting people to care about climate change: Obscure words in articles about rising sea levels and supercharged weather could discourage people from wanting to learn more about a planetary crisis.
The solution is to put jargon and buzzwords into simple language that anyone can understand. It takes some effort, of course. A good example is āUp Goer Five,ā a diagram byĀ Randall Monroe, the cartoonist behind the website xkcd. It explains how a rocket works using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. Simplifying lingo related to climate change requires a similar process. Take a cold, clinical word like ābiodiversityā and turn it into theĀ more evocativeĀ āwildlife.ā A real head-scratcher like āclimate mitigationā becomes āreducing emissions.ā
Forget ādumbing down.ā Using more common language is āsmartening up,ā saidĀ Susan Joy Hassol, director of the nonprofit science outreach group Climate Communication in North Carolina, who coaches scientists and journalists to write and speak more conversationally. āThe only thing thatās dumb,ā Hassol said, āis speaking to people in language that they donāt understand.ā
Jargon is good way to kill someoneās interest in a particular topic, according toĀ researchĀ published this month in PLOS ONE, a science and medicine journal. Readers take it as a sign that the material isnāt for them. For the study at Ohio State University, 650 people read paragraphs about self-driving cars, surgical robots, and 3D bioprinting online. Half of them read paragraphs filled with cringe-worthy phrases (like āAI integrationā), while the other half read phrases translated into plain English (make that āprogrammingā). After they were finished, those subjected to obscure words said they felt less interested in science ā even when those words were defined.
When something is easy to read, people find they want to learn more about the subject, said Hillary Shulman, lead author of the study and anĀ assistant professorĀ of communication at Ohio State. Her research has shown that people are more receptive to information written in plain old print instead of cursive, just because itās easier to process. Avoiding jargon matters, she said, for anyone who wants to get their message to a broad audience.
āIf you limit your work to the people who really work hard to read it, youāre probably missing out on the audience you actually need to be reading the work,ā Shulman said. āYou donāt need the people who are already bought in.ā
Jargon doesnāt just leave people feeling disengaged ā it can also fuel a head-in-the-sand response, according to one of ShulmanāsĀ previous studies. Encountering new things often feels difficult and risky, she said, and many people naturally respond by coming up with counterarguments.
Research shows that the best way to communicate about science might just be ā¦ to talk like a normal human being. OneĀ studyĀ published last week found that when scientists showed their human side and told personal stories, their audience was more receptive to what they were saying. Linguistics has shown something similar: You were probably taught to cut all filler words likeĀ uh, um,Ā andĀ like, but they can serve an important role in communication, helping listenersĀ process complex information. And despite common wisdom that baby-talk is useless ā just talk to them like adults, am I right? ā recent studies suggest that over-enunciating words and using a sing-song voice actually helpsĀ babies acquire language. Good communication isnāt necessarily about sounding smart.
So how could scientists and journalists talk more like the average person? Hassol has assembled a list of about 150 terms that mean one thing to scientists and another to the general public. To most people, āpositive feedbackā means praise, but when scientists say the same phrase, theyāre talking about a vicious cycle. Similarly, āaerosolsā are not just cans of hair spray and sunscreen, but also tiny particles in the atmosphere.
Scientists use all this specialized terminology because for them, itās efficient ā one word gets across a complex concept. But then scientists pass these same esoteric words on to journalists, who then turn them on an unsuspecting public. And itās not just academics complicating the climate lexicon: Politicians, companies, and activists use buzzwords that most people donāt understand, too.
I begged peopleĀ on TwitterĀ to tell me what words tripped them up the most while reading climate change articles, then asked Hassol to help me break down some of the most insidious terms. Hereās a short list of the jargon and buzzwords that came up, along with some plain-English translations to help make sense of them.
- Carbon footprint:Ā How much carbon-dioxide emissions can you attribute to a country, company, or maybe your neighbor? The answer is their carbon footprint.
- Circular economy:Ā A system where nothing really gets thrown away. In other words, your old smartphone gets broken up into its different parts and recycled ā or more likely, youāreĀ repairing it.
- Climate adaptation:Ā Improving our ability to cope with climate change. Think building sea walls, breeding crops that can tolerate droughts, and restoring the natural course of rivers. (See āresilienceā below.)
- Environmental justice:Ā A phrase underscoring the broad idea thatĀ the people who did the least to cause climate change and pollution are the often the most at risk from the consequences.
- Just transition:Ā Shifting to an economy that runs on solar and wind energy without killing jobs.
- Geoengineering:Ā Using technology to try to counteract some of the warming caused by burning coal, oil, and gas. Like spraying tiny particles in the air to reflect the sunlight back into space so it doesnāt heat up the planet.
- Net-zero:Ā Canceling out the carbon dioxide we emit by making sure that the same amount gets sucked up by trees, plants, machines, or other things. (See: Offset.)
- Offset:Ā Something you buy that promises to cancel some or all of the carbon dioxide produced by, say, your next cross-country flight.
- Resilience:Ā Our ability to deal with climate changeās effects. Simply put, a more resilient New York City will be better able to withstand another Superstorm Sandy.
- Sustainable:Ā Using a resource in a way that wonāt deplete it. Example: Making sure a forest has a bunch of new trees growing before you cut down an old one.
As they get picked up by companies andĀ politicians, slippery buzzwords like āsustainabilityā and āresilienceā are starting to lose their meaning. Deploying them now might even backfire. During testimony in the Senate last year, Frank Luntz ā a messaging strategist who advises Republicans and advocates forĀ climate actionĀ ā said that āsustainabilityā rings of the āstatus quo.ā He explained: āWhat American people really want is something that is cleaner, safer, healthier. What theyāre asking for is improvement, not the status quo.ā
Acronyms also get in the way of making sense. AĀ recent studyĀ in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences considered how to transform society to take action on climate change. In the paper, scientists coined the phrase āsocial tipping interventions,ā which they went on to call STIs. That means something, uh, totally different to the rest of the population.
Hassol, who was the senior science writer on three U.S. National Climate Assessments, remembers one instance in which some scientists wanted to abbreviate the spruce bark beetle thatās destroying forests across the American West as āSBB.ā Hassol thought that was nuts. Why not just use its full name once, she suggested, and then refer to it as āthe beetleā after that? She also thinks itās better to call the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where oil companies have been angling to drill for decades, by its full name ā not ANWR, pronouncedĀ an-whar. The acronym doesnāt exactly make caribou orĀ indigenous cultureĀ spring to mind.
āWhen you put an acronym on something, it loses its power,ā Hassol said.