22/09/2019

We Want To Learn About Climate Change From Weather Presenters, Not Politicians

The Conversation -  | 

Melbourne’s ABC weather presenter Paul Higgins discussing a trend towards warmer April days. ABC/MCCCRH
One of the great paradoxes of climate change communication in Australia is that politicians command the most attention on the issue, yet are among the least trusted sources of climate information.
Research has shown that domestic politics has the strongest influence on Australian media coverage of climate change. In contrast, in India and Germany media attention is driven by factors such as international climate meetings and the activities of environmental advocacy groups.
In Australia, the four most trusted information sources on climate change are climate scientists, farmers, firefighters, and weather presenters, according to Monash University research.
This suggests people want to hear more from scientists about climate change - if only they had greater visibility. Farmers and firefighters may have won the public’s trust because they work at the frontline of climate change, in figuring out how to grow our food with diminishing rainfall or put out fires in an ever-expanding fire season.
Then-Treasurer Scott Morrison hands then-Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during Question Time in Parliament in 2017. Research shows that politicians are not a trusted source of information on climate change. Mick Tsikas/AAP
Of this exclusive group, only weather presenters have the distinction of being both trusted and skilled communicators, and having access to large audiences. As such, they can play a very important role in delivering factual, apolitical information to millions of Australians.
Our research at Monash shows that even Australians concerned about climate change have surprisingly low levels of climate literacy, relative to the immense scale of the problem. This is not to say that simply giving people more facts will improve their knowledge - the assumption that underpins the “deficit model” of science communication. Facts, in themselves, will not necessarily influence people. But when they are delivered by trusted sources they can be very powerful.

People still love the nightly news
In the age of ubiquitous media coverage, it is remarkable that television remains the single largest source of news in Australia. People enjoy the ritual of news delivered at a dependable time that marks the end of the working day.
Veteran news anchors and weather presenters can fill the same place in a viewer’s day for decades, providing a sense of constancy. Weather presenters in particular deal with variations of the same serialised story, and many find that incorporating climate information improves the bulletin.
Channel Seven’s Melbourne weather presenter Jane Bunn, presenting a graphic charting the city’s dry February days. Seven News/MCCCRH
Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub has engaged weather presenters to present climate information in more than one-third of Australia’s media markets across three major networks.
Similarly in the US, the Climate Matters project, established in 2008, has engaged more than 500 weather presenters to present climate information, aided by research from the Center for Climate Change Communication.
Just as these broadcasters present the day’s observed temperatures, they also present observed climate trends over a longer time scale.
The research hub offers graphics and information that weather presenters may use. Channel Seven weather presenter Jane Bunn and the ABC’s Paul Higgins, both of whom are broadcast in Melbourne, were the first to sign up to the Australian pilot program. See video below.
In an article in The Age newspaper in February this year, Bunn said she wanted to communicate only “the facts, quietly put through in a straightforward way that people can understand”.


A reel of Australian weather presenters improving their broadcasts with climate information.

This point touches on another finding of our research - that the public is most receptive to information that is “non-persuasive” or does not attempt to advocate one way or another.
Bunn told The Age that viewers were “generally fascinated with weather trends anyway and this is just giving them more of what they want”.

Weather presenters get it
When surveyed, 91% of Australia’s 75 weather presenters were interested in presenting local historical climate information.
Those participating in the Australian program generally present observed climate trends over 30-50 years: more than 30 years, because that is what the science says is needed for a strong climate signal, but less than 50 years because most people don’t care about the time scale beyond that.
The Monash project examines long-term climate trends in each month of the year, such as how many March days in Sydney have been hotter than 25℃, or the coldest September night Melbourne has experienced.
Chris Mitchell removes flood-damaged items in Townsville, February 2019, after days of torrential rain. Dan Peled/AAP
Notably, the project presents only local trends in climate relating to cities, towns and regions in Australia. Our research consistently shows that audiences connect with local information much more than national and global data, because the local information is seen to be far more relevant.
Audiences may also link the information to stories about local extreme weather events associated with climate change, such as floods and more violent storms.

Audiences hungry for more in weather reports
A farmer surveys a cracked riverbed on his drought-stricken property near Cunnamulla, Queensland. Dave Hunt/AAP
The appetite of Australians for information about climate trends is also very high. A 2017 survey of Australian television audiences found that about 88% of respondents were interested in learning about the impacts of climate change in a weather bulletin. Almost 85% would continue watching their main news program if it started presenting climate information.
More importantly, 57% of respondents said they would switch from their regular news program that wasn’t presenting on climate change to a rival channel that did.
The communication of climate information to audiences can help overcome a little-understood phenomenon known as “pluralistic ignorance”, sometimes also referred to as “perception gap”. It refers to the fact that while more than 75% of Australians say they are concerned about climate change, just 50% believe others have the same level of concern.
This phenomenon is more common in nations such as Australia and the US where there is a strong denialist lobby, or merchants of doubt - groups that may be small but can strongly influence a person’s confidence to discuss climate change in their everyday life. The point is that if others are perceived to be unconcerned, it leads to strong self-silencing among the vast majority of Australians.
So if trusted sources such as weather presenters can show leadership in the public conversation by normalising climate information, this will help bridge the perception gap - and hopefully prompt more discussion of how to respond to the climate crisis.

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Climate Council: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like

Climate Council -  | |  | 

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The word “unprecedented” has been in regular use lately.
As predictions about climate change increasingly become observations, we are witnessing firsthand the impacts of more frequent and severe weather events.
These events are playing havoc with our health, our agricultural systems, our communities and our economy. But they are also having devastating impacts on our natural ecosystems and unique wildlife.
The Climate Council’s new report, ‘This is What Climate Change Looks Like,’ highlights recent examples of these impacts. In many cases, our ecosystems and species were already under threat from other human-associated causes – like land clearing, over-harvesting, and invasive feral animals and weeds.
Climate change is adding to this litany of woes, in some cases providing what might be the last straw for species and systems already under grave stress.

Key Findings
Australia is home to more than a million species of plants and animals, yet our track record on conservation is woeful; climate change is making it even harder to protect our natural ecosystems and unique wildlife.
  • Our natural ecosystems and unique wildlife are already under grave stress from land clearing, over-harvesting and invasive feral animals and plants; climate change is adding to this litany of woes and is proving to be the last straw for some systems and species.
  • The status of biodiversity in Australia is considered ‘poor and deteriorating’ according to the most recent State of the Environment Report, which also found that the traditional pressures facing the environment are now being exacerbated by climate change.
  • Between 1996 and 2008, Australia was among the top 7 countries responsible for 60% of global biodiversity loss. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature ranks Australia fourth in the world for species extinction and first for loss of mammals.
Australia has one of the highest rates of species extinction in the world and it now holds the first record of a mammalian extinction due to climate change. Other species are in grave danger because of our warming climate.
  • The Bramble Cay melomys was listed as endangered but no active steps were taken to protect the native rodent found on a low-lying atoll in the Torres Strait; storms and rising sea levels led to its extinction.
  • Green turtles are in grave danger because the animals hatching in the northern Great Barrier Reef are 99% female due to warming. The complete ‘feminisation’ of the population may occur in the very near future with disastrous consequences.
  • Bogong moths are in decline in the Australian alps because drought has affected the grass on which the larvae of the moths feed. These moths are a vital part of the food chain for many alpine birds and mammals.
Image showing the death of iconic red river gums along the waterways and floodplains of the Murray-Darling River. Credit: Bill Bachman; Amy Toensing.
Droughts, ‘dry’ lightning strikes and heatwaves are transforming many Australian forests.
  • Ignitions from ‘dry’ lightning storms are increasing in frequency because of climate change, sparking many remote bushfires. Thousands of dry lightning strikes in early 2016 caused bushfires that devastated nearly 20,000 hectares in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
  • The Murray-Darling Basin has suffered a long-term drying trend, seriously affecting the magnificent river red gums that line the waterways. Climate change-exacerbated droughts, on top of water mismanagement, are depriving the gums of the flooding they need every few years to remain healthy.
  • The jarrah forests of Western Australia are suffering as a result of long-term rainfall decline, as well as drought and heatwaves.
  • Giant kelp forests that support rich marine biodiversity are declining around the southern mainland coast and Tasmania due to underwater heatwaves and the impacts of changes in the distribution of marine herbivores.
Australia needs to take a far bolder approach to conservation to ensure our species and ecosystems are as resilient as possible to worsening extreme weather. 
  • Australia’s high greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to increasingly severe changes in the climate system, which means further deterioration of our environment is inevitable. 
  • Creating and connecting new habitats and the translocation of some species will be necessary to prevent further extinctions. 
  • Australia must achieve deep and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to keep temperature rise to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. 
  • Australia needs to accelerate the transition to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technologies and ramp up other climate solutions in transport, industry, agriculture, land use and other sectors. 
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National Geographic: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like In Australia

National Geographic

Climate change scientists say Australia needs to take a far bolder approach to conservation to stop further deterioration of our environment in a new report by the Climate Council. 
Dead Carnaby’s Cockatoos collected after Esperance heatwave. Photographer unknown.
A NEW REPORT released by the Climate Council today has compiled catastrophic images of what climate change looks like in Australia.
Among the images are dead cockatoos and flying foxes, dying river red gums, bleached coral reefs and devastated kelp forests, which the council says shows us “our life support system on life support.”
“Australia’s ecosystems are being transformed before our eyes,” the report reads.
“Already bruised and battered by multiple human-induced stresses including land clearing, invasive species and freshwater diversion, climate change is adding insult to injury.
“Solutions are at hand. We need to accelerate the transition to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technologies and ramp up other climate solutions in transport, industry, agriculture, land use and other sectors.
“Our health, economy, communities, and precious natural icons depend on it.”

Animals:  Heat stress impacts
Mountain pygmy possum with dead pouch young. (Image credit: Dean Heinze)

Dead ringtail possums. (Image credit: Alyse Huyton)

Mass death of spectacled flying foxes in Cairns during November 2018 heatwaves. (Image credit: David White)

 
Ecosystem collapse
TOP Healthy seagrasses at Shark Bay (Image credit: Jordan Thomson, Shark Bay Research Project)
BOTTOM Dead seagrasses at Shark Bay (Image credit: Robert Nowicki, Shark Bay Research Project) 



Mangroves of the Gulf of Carpentaria before and after a marine heatwave (Image credit: Norman Duke)
Royal penguins make their way up and down the trail, at the royal penguin colony, at Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island, Southern Ocean (Image credit: Brett Phibbs) and Dieback of Azorella (Image credit: Dana Bergstrom)
Camiguin Island corals (Image credit: Klaus Stiefel. License: CC BY-NC 2.0) andLizard Island, GBR May 2016 (Image credit: The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey)

River red gums, Murray Riverland, South Australia (Image credit: Bill Bachman) and
Dead river red gums (Image credit: Amy Toensing)
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