You Can't Persuade Climate Change Skeptics by Calling Them Names

Global Climate Change, National Park Service

I promised to offer suggestions for persuading people that global warming is real. Young Swedish firebrand Greta Thunberg has been traveling the world telling world meetings that they need to listen to the scientists and act. But many Americans don’t believe that global warming is occurring, or they deny that human activity is causing it. Five percent of Americans in a recent survey said that the climate is not changing, while another thirteen percent said that human beings are not causing climate change. Unfortunately, if these eighteen percent dominate the Republican primary voting bloc, they wield influence far beyond their numbers.

Thunberg has us thinking about climate change. Good for her. Most responses to Thunberg’ speeches have relied almost entirely on ad hominem attacks as people criticize her parents, her mental health, the way she dresses, and her physical appearance. Those weak attacks reflect her opponents’ intellectual and moral poverty. So, people might wonder, how might we persuade the doubters?

Before we think about that, however, let’s talk about how not to persuade people about climate change. This is important, because, as any teacher will tell you, it is a lot harder to get wrong ideas out of a person’s head than it is to get good ideas into them. This post shows an ineffective (but all-too-common) way to persuade people about climate change. My next post will talk about how to persuade people with at least some hope that you will succeed.

Let's put this into context. Ignorance reigns. Not knowing things is our natural state. Bad ideas float everywhere, like malicious mind gremlins that attack everything smart. The mind gremlins block out knowledge. Mind gremlins work because many people don’t know much about science. The mind gremlins fill the void. Climate change is a relatively new scientific research field. In one survey a few years ago, about one out of four Americans did not know that the earth travels around the sun. About half deny the theory of evolution by natural selection. It should be no surprise that something as obscure and seemingly subjective as climate change encounters stubborn ignorance rather than reception. 

Some of these attitudes may never be overcome. Still, there are basically three ways to go about persuading climate change deniers: (1) Persuade climate change deniers that the sources to which they listen, typically the conservative media, are unreliable. Or, (2) persuade climate change deniers that people who tell them about science are credible. Or, (3) present the evidence in detail. None of these will work all the time. I pretty much guarantee you that (1) and (2) are hopeless. Conservatives have very strong commitment to conservative media, and attacking those media directly is unlikely to change anyone’s mind. The conservative media have trained their listeners to mistrust experts. People won't start to trust experts just because you say so.

But this frustrates climate change activists and leads them to give useless speeches. Consider the following (imaginary) speech by a climate change activist:

"What is wrong with you clowns? We have thousands of scientific studies showing that climate change is real. Human beings have pumped zillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air, and of course it has affected our climate. Where do you think you’re going to live after the earth boils? Look at all the conservatives living in Tampa and St. Petersburg and Galveston. Are you eager to be flooded out of your homes? Are you stupid? Why do you listen to people on Fox News, let alone talk radio announcers who have no scientific training? Why do you ignore anyone who has actually taken a science course? Are you a bunch of nuts? Are you completely ignorant? Are you proud to be ignorant and stupid? Grow up and quit being idiots."

Unfortunately, with only a little exaggeration, that could be a typical climate change talk. And, in their frustration, some climate advocates get even worse. Science personality and Dancing with the Stars dancer Bill Nye lit a globe on fire and said: 

“The average temperature could go up another 4 to 8 degrees. What I’m saying is that the planet’s on f---ing fire. There are a lot of things we could do to put it out. Are any of them free? No! Of course not! Nothing’s free, you idiots. Grow the f--- up. You’re not children any more. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were twelve. But you’re adults now, and this is an actual crisis. Got it?” 

Nye was venting, not persuading. Yes, he was frustrated, but no wild diatribe will persuade skeptics. Nye probably felt better after his rant. It was probably cathartic. But was it his goal to feel superior – or to change people’s minds?

Guess what? Lashing out at people isn’t persuasive. First, people don’t like to be insulted. People who really are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or uneducated are sick and tired of being told that they are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or uneducated. People insult them every day. Listening to insults is the background of their lives. They are not impressed when someone insults them.

Second, neither Nye’s speech nor my imaginary climate change advocate gave us much climate change information. Oops.

So, strive for something better. Let climate change activists present the research and try to activate the listeners’ willingness and ability to understand the scientific information. That requires us to know the details of what scientists have said, and it also requires us to present that information in a clear, understandable way. It might not work. But it’s all that you can do. I’ll talk about that in an upcoming post. I'll also explain a persuasion theory that helps us understand how that works. Hint: the only cure for ignorance is information. Stay tuned!


P.S.: If 1 out of 4 Americans don’t know that the earth travels around the sun, there is something seriously wrong with science education. Oops again.