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ScienceMarch 15, 2019

Strike if you like, but then go do what really matters: maths and physics

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Climate change is here and now, and young people will bear the costs of continued inaction. But it matters less whether they skip a day of school than what they do when they go back, argues climate scientist Dave Frame

The school students’ climate change strike has divided political and parental opinion. For some, it’s great children are finding their voice on an issue of global importance and placing pressure on the adult power structures that do so little to reduce climate change. For others, it seems facile and perverse – given any viable solution requires giant dollops of engineering technology and deep policy wonkery, children are going to need all the education they can get and skipping school is in many ways a self-defeating bargaining chip.

To me, the march has at least one poignant element: the outcomes this century really are up to today’s (global) youth. They will bear the consequences of continued inaction or they will bear the consequences of a massive and ground-shaking transition. (Most likely, they will do some of both.)

Quite how acutely this generation is in the centre of things is not always widely appreciated. In New Zealand, we still talk about climate change as though it is remote in time and space. The New Zealand media’s strange and disproportionate focus on the remote and uninhabited continent of Antarctica and on sea level-rise – among the slowest-evolving parts of the problem – make the problem seem distant: some other time, some other place.

But climate change is here, now, and it’s doing lots of damage. The damage directly attributable to climate change from extreme rainfall and droughts over the last decade has probably already cost New Zealand somewhere around a billion dollars, and probably more.

That’s a lot of money, and a lot of damage, and it’s already happened. The situation is even starker elsewhere. People in the tropics are beginning to experience climates their grandparents may never have seen and unless we decarbonise rapidly the climates today’s young people experience will be a distant memory by the time they are old.

Living in a changing climate is simply a fact of life for today’s youth. It’s something they will have to cope with. One way or another they will deal with it. The magnitude of those changes is something that will be up to them, like it or not. Dealing with climate change is not, for today’s youth, a choice.

This sort of issue inevitability is not new. It is to be expected in times of technological change. Each of the past several generations has faced unprecedented challenges. The generations born between 1890 and 1920 faced industrial warfare on an unprecedented scale. Those born since have lived under the uneasy peace of nuclear deterrence. In the 1980s, in response to Aids and acid rain, the late Hunter S Thompson wrote “about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death”.

What’s unique about climate change is not the global nature of the challenge but the dim prospects for success. Taking a day off school won’t make any difference either way. The worst outcome is if the participants convince themselves they’ve achieved something, because climate change will still be there, big and ugly as ever, in the morning. This is an enduringly hard problem, at least until technologies exist that make doing the right thing about as cheap as doing the wrong thing.

What the striking students should be clear about is what meaningful action looks like. It doesn’t look like grander and grander declarations or stronger distant targets. Targets are aspirations but policies determine action. Targets and declarations are like the things boxers say before a fight. Policies and options are like the punches they throw and the defensive stances they deploy. That’s where the game is won and lost.

Today’s young people will bear the costs of continued inaction on climate change, and will reap the benefits if they can innovate their way out of the problem. It matters less whether they skip a day of school than what they do when they go back.

From a climate change perspective, not all subjects are equal. Two areas matter most: maths and physics, and the humanities. Maths and physics are essential on two fronts. One is because the best foundation for engineering is maths and physics; and innovation in engineering promises to be a vital part of climate solutions. The other is climate science, where maths and physics form the background for our understanding of the climate. Most my colleagues on the IPCC Physical Science Working Group are applied mathematicians or physicists, although this is sometimes obscured by graduating from oceanography or meteorology programmes. Basically, climate change is scientifically a physics problem, and creating new frontiers in low carbon energy is, too.

The humanities are also fundamental. History, philosophy and international politics are vital components of the climate change problem. (I guess economics is, too.) We could have all the low carbon solutions in the world, ready and available for low-cost deployment, but if the nations of the world cannot find a way to work together to invest in that deployment, then climate change will continue to confound both today’s youthful generation and that of their children (and their children’s children, and so on to biblical infinitude).

So enjoy the protest, if protests are the sorts of things you enjoy. But focus on the stuff that matters: policies and products, not speeches and declarations. And when you go back to school, hit the books, but choose wisely. Your collective futures depend on it.

Dave Frame is Professor of Climate Change and Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington

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Your vaccine reporting should not look like this. Photo: Getty
Your vaccine reporting should not look like this. Photo: Getty

ScienceMarch 12, 2019

The problem with false balance reporting on vaccination

Your vaccine reporting should not look like this. Photo: Getty
Your vaccine reporting should not look like this. Photo: Getty

A measles outbreak in Canterbury has prompted a rush for vaccinations and airtime for anti-science perspectives. Jess Berentson-Shaw explains how the media can report responsibly on the issue

It is no secret, I love an effective vaccine. I love that all children can have a healthy childhood through the actions of both their own parents and others who don’t know them. It is a warm fuzzy union of science and collective action. My love affair has seen me accused on multiple occasions of being in the pocket of big pharma. Alas, no money has yet been forthcoming.

What is a secret is that people’s feelings about vaccinations are nuanced because vaccination is too often portrayed in the media as a battle between two sides: those who are “pro-science” and those who are “anti-vaxx”. And what falls in between this gap of reporting are the vast majority of people who need journalists to do better. People who need to build trust in both the science and health care professionals, in order to have good conversations and make informed decisions about vaccination.

False balance reporting is doing a disservice to society

One way that people in the media can play up this polarisation of views is through a technique known as false balance. It is a type of reporting that pits those with opposing views of the science against a scientific position, inferring both types of information are equally valid. The early (and not so early) days of climate change reporting included a lot of false balance.

The assumption underlying this type of reporting (if I am being generous to the reporters’ and editors’ motivations) is that people are smart, they can make up their own minds about the science, and it is good to present alternative views on a big issue. It is an argument based on the belief in “a marketplace of ideas”, in which all ideas should be able to compete, and the best information will win out.

Like most market-driven theories, this one is based on a pretty shallow understanding of how people and the world actually work.

Facts can’t outcompete emotion or opinion

No information is neutral because people are not driven by logic or facts. Studies have been showing for years that even scientific types use their values and beliefs to filter any information they receive, using emotion to decide whether to believe it or reject it. A foundational study by Dann Kahn at Harvard University showed that even a group of Harvard professionals responded to a scientific statement about nanotechnology mostly with emotion. They used their values to interpret the implications of the scientific statement. People in Kahn’s study formed totally opposing views about the risks and benefits of the technology based not on facts, but on what they thought was most important in life.

We are not computers. Rather, we take information and determine whether it fits with what we think matters in the world. We have an emotional reaction to information and reject or accept it as true on this basis. What this means is that scientific information won’t ‘outcompete’ opinion simply because it is factual. On the contrary, it is at a distinct disadvantage because often those advocating for science specifically try to create a “neutral” presentation. This is impossible because all language and communication frame certain ways of thinking about the world, even if we are blissfully unaware of it. So neutral information is often just information that is unclear on the story it is telling people.

Facts can’t outcompete misinformation

Not only are our brains not led by logic, but our information environment is awash with disinformation and misinformation that is constantly using narratives that are filled with values and emotion to persuade us. Many of our dominant cultural narratives – these are implicit stories that exist in society about how things work, why things happen to people – are based on a pretty thin understanding of research, science and evidence. Mainly because our brains have a preference for simple explanations, and the world can be complicated.  Facts and science, presented in neutral terms, just cannot penetrate these powerful cultural narratives when we are awash with intentionally framed misinformation, often driven by commercial or personal interests.

So when journalists and editors choose to pit the facts of vaccination against an emotive individual story about a parent’s fears, they have moved from informed reporting to helping spread misinformation about vaccination.

What should people in the media do instead?

While it is true that there are extremes in the conversation about vaccination, most people don’t actually have particularly strong views. What they have are easily triggered fears about their children’s wellbeing. What they need in order to make informed decisions is to feel listened to and develop trust in the health professionals who care about their children.

There are a multitude of structural responses required of digital media companies to halt the spread of disinformation and misinformation about vaccination. Facebook following Pinterest’s lead in slowing the sharing of false information about vaccination is a good start.

For individual journalists and editors, by all means, tell the stories of parents who have some concerns. But show what good communication about vaccination looks like between hesitant parents and health professionals who care. I have had great conversations with parents who have said to me: “My child had a reaction to a vaccination and I would do it again because I understand this matters not just for my children but vulnerable children who can’t be vaccinated.” Wow! That is a nuanced and important story.

Understand that the science is good but that it doesn’t have the same opportunity to penetrate as fear-based storytelling. So don’t go to people who are stridently opposed to vaccination. They only represent about 3% of the population anyway, so whose interests are you presenting? This just does harm. I know most journalists, despite what the public might say at times, do care about helping people and building a stronger democracy by providing good information. It takes a nuanced approach to ensure this is actually what you are achieving with the way you report on vaccination.

Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw is the author of A Matter of Fact. Talking truth in Post Truth World and Co-Director of The Workshop.

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