Group therapy helps scientists cope with challenging ‘climate emotions’

14/8/2023

Group therapy helps scientists cope with challenging ‘climate emotions’

Joe Duggan, Australian National University and Neal Robert Haddaway, University of Johannesburg

As climate records tumble and wildfires rage, people all over the planet are feeling the toll.

Negative emotional responses such as anger, fear, sadness and despair recorded in children and young people are also felt by climate scientists. But positive emotions such as hope are also part of the picture.

Anxiety is a natural response to these conflicting emotions. The consequences range from trouble sleeping, to difficulty working and socialising. Climate anxiety can also exacerbate or trigger other mental health problems.

In our new research, we explored using group therapy to create a safe space for scientists to share their feelings. Such safe spaces are vital for people to understand and process their emotions and ultimately find the strength and resilience to continue their important work.

How do you deal with climate anxiety? (ABC TV - BTN High)

Anxiety can trigger action

Climate anxiety has not been classified as a mental health disorder. Some researchers warn against calling it a disease, because this implies it’s caused by some type of dysfunction within the individual, requiring therapeutic intervention, perhaps even medication.

Rather, they argue climate anxiety can be a catalyst for action. It is also a reasonable response to what is a significant existential risk.

We know collective and individual climate action can alleviate negative climate emotions.

We also know negative emotions such as guilt are less motivating than positive emotions. The limitations of fear as a motivator are well documented.

A fly on the wall

Over two days, seven environmental scientists participated in intensive group therapy facilitated by a qualified psychologist. They shared their feelings about climate change, discussed academic pressures, and how their individual identities intersected with their professional roles and research.

We analysed transcripts from these sessions and found:

1. Deep awareness of the climate crisis puts scientists at greater risk of mental health problems. As one participant said,

It’s very easy to fall into this vortex, right? Of thinking about climate change as a problem and not just climate change, but […] global environmental change, ecological loss.

2. The nature of academia means climate emotions overlap with “intersectionality” (the interconnected nature of race, class, gender and so on) to worsen their experience. According to one scientist,

I always tell students you have to do experiments in pairs, documented, because as a person of colour, I would be doubted, you know, if we made that great discovery.

3. Scientists do not talk about the emotional toll of their working knowledge. As one said:

How do you talk to your colleagues [about climate change] We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about how [climate change] is making us feel. And I didn’t know if that was just me, but I was also like, why don’t we talk about it?

4. Safe spaces such as group therapy can have an immediate valuable cathartic effect. One participant observed:

I’m privileged to be sitting here with an amazing group of people. I think what came out of this conversation, [from] the way things have been framed and reframed and picked apart and put back together again, is incredibly useful.

More work to be done

Our findings support the value of group therapy as a cathartic outlet for climate emotions among environmental scientists. But further research is needed before this intervention is offered routinely within research institutions, among existing colleagues and peers.

In this case the scientists were strangers from across the United States, brought together by a Swedish documentary film crew. That may have made them more inclined to open up and share their emotions.

We also need to know how long this cathartic effect lasts, and what long-term support might be necessary to foster lasting benefits.

Different generations and groups experience a wide range of different climate emotions. Equally, a wide range of solutions must be made available to help people, particularly environmental scientists, deal with the negative emotions affecting their daily lives.

Group therapy is not a silver bullet, but it does show promise. The tool allows people to share their emotions, realise they are not alone, and gain a sense of community and catharsis from spending dedicated time with others who find themselves in similar situations.

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, more people will be exposed to harm. Even more will be exposed to reports and news coverage discussing our increasingly uncertain future. As a result, climate anxiety is likely to become more prolific, perhaps most so in climate scientists. This presents a real and urgent need to explore how we manage and process climate anxiety.

While collective and individual action offer ways to reduce climate anxiety indirectly, we also need more platforms for knowledge sharing, more safe spaces and more research into managing the mental health impacts that we are all clearly already feeling.

Joe Duggan, PhD Candidate, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Australian National University and Neal Robert Haddaway, Senior Research Fellow, Africa Centre for Evidence and Stockholm Environment Institute, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Facts don't change people, emotions do

5/3/2020

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Guest Blogger Nic Badullovich
Nic has a background in Earth science, specialising in petrology and geochemistry. His main focus now is science communication reviewing and researching climate change framing.
His YouTube channel - Accretionite aims to provide fun and interesting knowledge about our Earth.

How does this make you feel?

Research tells us that shocking and fearful imagery can act as an initial hook to capture your attention. The downside is that this can then lead to feelings of helplessness which can distance people from issues such as climate change[1]. Even worse, these kinds of fearful images can trigger further disengagement potentially leading to denial of climate change[2].

So, what should people interested in Climate Change Communication (CCC) do?

Usually, a lack of personal concern about climate change is attributed to the issue being distant in time and mind[3]. However, there is mounting evidence that suggests emotions could present a way of better connecting people with the issue and motivating them to take action.

Psychology has been onto this for some time and there are numerous studies looking at how emotion can affect persuasion. What is becoming clearer in CCC research is that emotion and the way you frame climate change messages can influence behaviour change, advocacy behaviour and support for policy[4].

Emotion has been established as an important determinant when it comes to risk communication[5]. Researchers have then attempted to apply this to the communication of climate change. This has lead to investigations trying to understand the role of emotions such as fear and hope in CCC.

For example, are fearful messages about the future more effective than hopeful ones? Or is someone more likely to act if they feel fearful or hopeful?

Fear isn't always a bad thing. It can be good at grabbing someone’s attention, but fearful messages need to be coupled with messages that make the individual feel empowered to take action[6]. Hope is another emotion that can predict behaviour, but on its own can downplay the severity of climate change[7] resulting in reduced perception of risk.

There is plenty of research looking into the role of emotion in communicating climate change[8]. But what kind of effect can emotion have?

Put simply, it can encourage advocacy behaviour[9], support for climate policy[10]‘[11]‘[12] and even budget allocation [5]. These studies have demonstrated empirically that emotions have a role in motivating climate action. But it might not be climate change itself that is motivating this action – it could more personal things that people care about.

‘Objects of care’ are things that can link people to climate change who otherwise may not care about climate change itself. Examples of these objects of care can be future generations, animals, environment, nature, the planet and people [5] – they’re all going to be affected by climate change. If climate change threatens one of our objects of care, then it can motivate us to take action.

Examples of this can be seen in the recent unprecedented Australian bushfires linked to our changing climate. Articles have emphasised the death of 33 people, more than 1 billion animals, or devastation of more than 11 million hectares of bushland. These articles are all reporting on the climate-driven bushfires but are emphasising impacts on three different objects of care: people, animals and environment.

A study of bird watchers found that fear messages were only useful as a motivator when coupled with one of these objects of care [13]. In the case of this study, fearful messages were used with either impact on humans, or impact on birds. What the authors found was that fearful messages increased intentions to act in pro-environmental ways, but only when coupled with impact on birds. The caveat here was that the people surveyed were bird watchers, but this still suggests that objects of care can be significant motivators when it comes to our behaviours.

We are only just beginning to uncover what kind of effect these objects of care can have in motivating action on climate change. But it is clear that emotion has a pivotal role to play. Understanding the role of emotion and these different objects of care and the behaviours they can motivate is still an active area of research.

[1] O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009), Sci. Commun.
[2] Lorenzoni et al. (2007), Glob. Environ. Chang.
[3] Corner et al. (2015), Wiley. Interdiscip. Rev. Clim. Chang.
[4] Wang et al. (2018), Glob. Environ. Chang.
[5] Roeser (2012), Risk Anal.
[6] Moser (2010), Wiley. Intersicip. Rev. Clim. Chang.
[7] Hornsey and Fielding (2016), Glob. Environ. Chang.
[8] Marlon et al. (2019), Front. Commun.
[9] Nabi et al. (2018), Scien. Commun.
[10] Wang et al. (2018), Glob. Environ. Chang.
[11] Smith and Leiserowitz (2014), Risk Anal.
[12] Lu and Schuldt (2015), Clim. Change.
[13] Dickinson et al. (2013), J. Environ. Educ.

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Can writing a letter prompt people to change how they behave?

19/9/2017

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Guest Blogger Lena Fletcher
Lena is the Natural Resources Conservation Chief Advisor, Program Manager, and Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Lena is part of a team at UMass that created an experimental incubator programme entitled Talking Truth: Finding Your Voice Around the Climate Crisis with the goal of supporting and building on the understanding of climate disruption. They explore options for taking action while connecting participants with this weighty global challenge we all face.

The power of simply asking the question, “How do you feel about climate change” is the backdrop to this story.

As a professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, part of my appointment involves student advising and mentoring incoming freshmen. In the late fall of 2015, I was invited to present at a “Meet the Faculty” event for first-year students, held in the evening in a dormitory lounge.

I had asked the students if there were guidelines around what I should talk about. There wasn't, so I asked to focus on climate change.

A resident student wandered in late and joined the group, just as I was passing out sheets of paper with the question, ‘How do you feel about climate change?“ This simple but powerful exercise is a practice we began on our campus as part of an experiential project, Talking Truth: Finding Your Voice Around the Climate Crisis. This exercise, inspired by 'Is This How You Feel?' is designed to support and build on the understanding of climate disruption. It is a way to connect participants to this weighty global challenge we all face.

After a quiet moment to reflect on the question, the students put pen to paper. However, the student who had just arrived immediately handed me back a blank sheet and said he was indifferent to the issue and didn’t want to write anything.

“Really, that’s fascinating. Will you write about that then?”

He shrugged and grudgingly scrawled a few sentences:

"My personal feelings on the matter are that I don’t really care." The student's letter

Much to my surprise, this same student showed up in my office a couple of months later to inquire about changing his major from Computer Science to Natural Resources Conservation. A couple of weeks later, he did just that.

By then I knew his name:

Muhammad.

The following semester, a local student group kicked into action calling on the University to be more environmentally conscious. They occupied the administrative building, demanding action. Over the course of several days, hundreds of students lined the halls leading to the Chancellor’s office. Outside, hundreds more rallied and waved signs. Television cameras rolled. As I stood listening to our students boldly demand the campus did more, the bullhorn was passed to a familiar person – Muhammed.

My jaw dropped. I nudged my colleague, shouting in her ear over the commotion. “That’s him,” I said. “Who?” she asked. “Blank page…the student who didn’t want to do the ‘How do you feel’ exercise.”

Muhammed calling for environmental change from his University - photo: Kris Nelson

I’ve thought about the apparent outward changes of this student advisee, Muhammad, many times since that evening. And I wondered what effect, if any, the writing exercise had on his decisions to choose an environmental major and become a vocal environmental activist.

This summer he came to my office for academic advising and enthusiastically reported on his year abroad in Morocco and Nepal and his current internship at a local wildlife refuge.

As for changing his major, he explained that he had chosen Computer Science because it was a family expectation. Our early encounters opened his eyes to people’s passion and enthusiasm for earth stewardship.

He remarked, “I wanted to meet more people like that.”

And then I asked about the writing exercise.

"Did it play a role in your decisions?"

His answer was a resounding yes.

...The power of a question.

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Three steps to beat climate change

1/9/2017

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Flickr/Tom Roche (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Climate change is bad. Like, real bad.

Humans are burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This is trapping more heat from the sun and changing the climate. Sea level is rising, ice cover is shrinking, storms and heatwaves are getting more frequent and more intense...

It’s pretty full on.

But we are still burning fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing and we’re still on track for a range of catastrophic impacts.

Why?

Because climate change is freaking overwhelming.

Not only is climate change often an intangible thing that you can’t actually see. It's a wicked problem. Acting against it or not acting against it has all these interconnected political, social, economic, and environmental ramifications. Before too long it gets to be pretty damn paralysing.

So what the hell do you do?

Yes, lying on the ground while you sob and wait for the hurt to go away is one option. But there is an alternative.

Bust through the feels.

It is possible to break through this feeling of overwhelm-ment (definitely a word). And it isn’t complicated. It doesn’t matter if you are 6 or 60. A Rhodes scholar or yet to finish primary school. An individual or a group of likeminded people.

1. Break it down
Yes, climate change is complicated. Yes, it is wicked. Accept it and break it back down to its constituent parts.

2. Find the bit that matters to you
Maybe it matters to you because it is relevant to your interests or expertise maybe because of where you live or where you fit into the world.

3. You do You
Approach the problem in your own way. Sure, look at how other people are tackling it and consider how you could help. But also think about what people aren’t doing. What could you be doing differently?

I, like a lot of people, grew up being aware of climate change. In 1988, the year I was born, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed. For my entire life scientists have been getting louder and louder on the urgency around climate change.

Growing up aware of this, I recycled. As I got older I tried to drive less and really thought about who I voted for. But I still felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. I understood that the issue was made up of a huge number of separate but connected parts, I just hadn't found the one 'bit' that mattered to me the most.

Then, in 2014, I was struck by two facts:

Basically all the climate scientists agree that climate change is real and humans are to blame.
Despite this, there is a huge number of people that either don’t care or don’t agree with the scientists.

Aaaand there it is.

If 10 builders walked into your house right now and nine of them started walking around tapping the walls saying stuff like:

“Yeh mate, there’s your problem, this isn’t structurally sound, I reckon it’ll come down in the next strong breeze”

You’d either stand up and get the hell outside, or at the very least feel compelled to start propping up the walls. Unfortunately this isn’t the case when it comes to climate scientists talking about climate change.

You've got to wonder:

Why would people listen to builders who tell them things about their house, but not scientists that tell them things about the climate?

This question intrigued me – before I was a science communicator I was a scientist, and before that I was a builders labourer. I’ve been lucky enough to get insight into both worlds – and there is one striking difference between them:

Scientists communicate differently to builders.

Scientists use data, jargon, statistics and graphs to communicate on their area of research. Now, this is crucial when they are speaking to other scientists. It allows them to speak with the utmost certainty on their given topic, it allows them to ‘show their working out’ and offers other scientists the oppurtunity to scrutinize their approach or build on their findings.

This sort of communication is perfect when scientists speak to other scientists.

But it is a shit way to talk to everyone else.

Builders on the other hand are frank and direct, clinical prose and jargon give way to colourful flourishes, the vibe and the feel are the important thing.

A spade is a fucking spade.

I figured that if I could get more scientists to speak differently about climate change – then maybe I could get more people to care about it, or at least to engage with the issue.

So I did something no one else had done yet. I approached the problem in my own way and started asking scientists how climate change made them feel.

To date 43 researchers from eight different countries have written down their feelings. And hundreds of thousands of people have read these letters.

Is This How You Feel? has changed peoples minds, started broader conversations and shown scientists that they are not alone in their feelings of hope, guilt, despair and optimism.

I am not unique, not gifted and not particularly driven.

I just broke down the problem, found the bit that mattered to me and approached it in my own way.

The cool thing is that this is so easy to do! And right now I can say, honestly, that when I look to the future I am excited because there is a positive change afoot. There are countless people taking this approach to climate change and they are having an impact.

Henry The Emotional Environmentalist

Some of you may have seen this kid on Youtube. His name is Henry Marr.

During one car ride with his Mum Henry got a little overwhelmed about the future of the planet. So much so that he started to weep. During this emotional episode, Henry’s mum did something all parents love to do. She got out her phone and captured the moment for posterity.

That video was uploaded to Youtube and has now been viewed over 290,000 times.

It’s fair to say that, at that point, Henry was pretty darn overwhelmed. But then with the support of his mum he was able to break the problem down.

The thing that really mattered to Henry was that people pick up their trash and look after the planet. So he started a Facebook page that encourages people to do just that.

This six year old now regularly shares videos to 40,000 of his followers giving people tips on recycling.

This kid is approaching the part of the problem that matters to him and he's doing it in his own way.

And he’s having an impact

Now it isn’t just adorable little American kids that are kicking butt. Here in Australia a change is happening too.

Anika Molesworth, Young Farmer of The Year

Anika Molesworth is a 29 year old farmer. She is on the front line of climate change and see’s the impact it has on the her peers. The part of climate change that matters to Anika is how it impacts the farming industry and farmers, both physically and emotionally. And she's tackling this problem in her own way, through founding not one but two organisations. Both designed to connect farmers to other farmers, to researchers, and to the wider community.

In a recent conversation Anika said:

"As people who live and work in geographically remote locations, it is sometimes hard not to feel alone. Like you are the only one experiencing this. But you’re not, and as farmers we do need to work together and unite our voices when we call for greater climate change action."

Innovative, novel and powerful approaches like this are having a real impact. And it’s not just individuals making a stand, Small communities are coming together and bringing about change from the grassroots. One such community is Tathra, a little town of just over 1600 people on the coast of New South Wales that rallied together and built Australia's first community owned solar farm.

The part of the problem that the people of Tathra have control over is what happens in their own community. So they took action and did something about it.

Members of the community in and around Tathra 'Imagining' the possibilities, before the power plants construction via Clean Energy For Eternity

The solar farm, arranged to spell the word 'imagine' is small, only generating enough energy to partially power the towns sewage treatment plant. But it is a start and Tathra is not alone. Small (and large) communities from all over Australia are standing up and taking control over how their town responds to climate change.

By themselves, all these approaches won't change the world, but every time someone breaks down the problem, finds the bit that matters to them and approaches it in their own way, we get a little bit closer to winning the battle.

There is a change happening. And it can all start with three little steps.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Be part of the solution.

You do you.

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How do people cope with feelings about climate change so that they stay engaged and take action?

2/3/2016

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By Dr Susie Burke PhD, FAPS
Dr Susie Burke is a senior psychologist at the Australian Psychological Society working on the environment and disasters. A significant part of Dr Susie Burkes' work in the Psychology in the Public Interest team is to examine and promote the role that psychology can play in helping us understand the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. Her current areas of interest include psychosocial impacts of climate change, communicating about environmental problems, psychological barriers to climate change, coping with climate change, and promoting pro-environmental behaviour

How people feel about climate change is enormously important because it plays a large part in what happens next – in what people do to cope with these feelings.

The feeling part is very important. Environmental psychologists know that knowing about climate is not enough for most people to take action; as George Marshall 2015 explains in his book, there are many, many ways in which people can ignore climate change or choose to do nothing about it. But when we feel the threat, then we are more likely to be motivated to take action. But it’s also then, of course, that we feel the most distress and worry. Common feelings are fear, anger, guilt, shame, grief, loss, helplessness. These strong feelings might result from direct fears about climate related weather events affecting us, or vicarious distress about future threats, or about climate change impacts in other places, or even distress in response to the existential threats to civilisation as we know it.

Reser et al. (2012), in a large scale survey of Australian’s perceptions and understandings of climate change in Australia reported that 20% of people show appreciable distress about climate change. A similar survey from the Yale Climate Project in America reported that a large percentage of people surveyed about climate change report feel disgusted, hopeful, helpless, sad, depressed or guilty about the issue.

These are uncomfortable and upsetting emotions to feel. The challenge in relation to climate change is to get people to cope with the feelings they have about climate change so that they:

don’t become overwhelmed by these feelings
don’t try to avoid the problem and hence the feelings
don’t burnout
stay engaged with the problem of climate change
keep functioning well, whilst accepting the reality of climate change, both in their everyday lives, as well as on the changes that they are making to reduce the threat of climate change.

Psychologists who study coping techniques for distress often categorise them into two broad classes: emotion focussed coping which involves trying to reduce the negative emotional responses; and problem-focussed coping which aims at changing the problem which is giving rise to the distress. Within each of these broad categories there are many adaptive techniques which can help people to manage the feelings and stay engaged with the problem of climate change.

Coping with emotions around climate change can be difficult, but it is vital Flickr/Midorionna CC BY NC 2.0

Emotion-focussed coping

Emotion focused coping techniques include things like emotional expression (acknowledging and expressing the feelings), cognitive reappraisal (construing a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in a way that changes its emotional impact), distraction, and a host of techniques for learning to increase distress tolerance so that the uncomfortable feelings are not so aversive.
Acknowledging the feelings we have about climate change is very important. Psychologists for a Safe Climate speak about this in their publication Let’s Speak about Climate Change. ‘Often we don’t know how strongly we feel about something until we find ourselves speaking about it to someone else. It can be amazingly therapeutic to give voice to feelings, rather than leave them swimming around inside our hearts or heads’.

George Marshall, in his final chapter of ‘some personal and highly biased ideas for digging our way out of this hole’, talks about the importance of being emotionally honest, talking openly about their hopes, fear, and anxieties. Psychotherapists argue that unless we recognise and articulate the strong feelings that climate change generates, there’s a risk that the feelings lead us to disavowal and outright denial. It can also be helpful for people to acknowledge their own tendencies to ignore, deny or avoid thinking about environmental problems. Talking about this will help others to identify and acknowledge similar reactions in themselves.

Environmental psychologist Susi Moser, also talks about the importance of acknowledging our underlying fears and distress about climate change as an important coping strategy. She argues that this is a necessary step for developing ‘authentic hope’ about climate change. Moser (2012) calls it ‘the bravest thing’ – getting real, accepting reality without illusions, and accepting that better tomorrows may not come. To develop authentic hope also requires a willingness to bear pain and suffering, to grow our capacity to deal with crisis, deep uncertainty, distress, worry, anxiety, fear, denial, grief, hopelessness.

Joanna Macy says that ‘when we touch into our depths, we find that the pit is not bottomless. It is enlivening to go with, rather than against, the flow of our deep felt responses to the world. Repressing emotions and information dampens our energy. When people are able to tell the truth about what they know, see and feel is happening to their world, a transformation occurs. There is an increased determination to act and a renewed appetite for life’ (Macy and Johnstone, 2012). Clearly, then, recognising our feelings of grief and anxiety about environmental threat, and providing the space for others to recognise and voice theirs, is an important step in coping with the feelings and at the same time staying engaged in the problem and the solutions.

Another type of emotion focussed coping is cognitive reappraisal - changing how you think about the threat of climate change in a way that changes its emotional impact. This strategy is based on the theory underlying cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), that it is the way in which we think about things that generates particular emotional responses. Thus, to change the emotions, we need to change the thinking.

Professor Thomas Doherty, environmental psychologist, psychotherapist, and wilderness therapist, uses cognitive reappraisal techniques in the work that he does with people in his efforts to improve human functioning in the context of climate change and other environmental threats. Thomas helps people to develop what he calls personal sustainability practices. He encourages us to think of ourselves as an ecosystem, and to develop the insight that it makes no sense to run oneself down in service of saving the world. We are nature. He does thought experiments with students to encourage more resilient thinking. For example, he asks, ‘Imagine you could travel to any other era in history. What would be the great moral or ethical challenge of that era? Every era has its challenges. Would you change then for now?’ This exercise helps to inoculate people to the conceit that we are somehow unique or have it worse than in the past. This is not the case (Doherty, 2016).

Reappraising the way in which we think about climate change is not to minimise or deny the severity of the problem; nor is it blithe positive thinking or bright-siding. The aim of reframing is to attain a more realistic and also empowering perspective based on the evidence. It might even be that some of the thoughts we have about climate change are actually quite rational and realistic, given the state of the environment, but they may not be particularly ‘helpful’, if they are leading to overwhelming feelings of despair or anger, and getting in the way of people coping and getting on with the important work that they have to do.

Let’s assume that you’re concerned about the environment and the future of the planet, and you want to do something about it. Perhaps you want to change some things in your own lifestyle as well as encourage others to change. Feeling better about the environment, optimistic about the possibility of change can help get you motivated to make positive changes, and prevent you from getting disillusioned about people’s capacity to make a difference. Thinking that ‘there’s a lot that we can personally do, starting today’ can help to motivate you to get on with the job of switching your car for a bike, or signing up for green energy. Then there’s the thinking ‘We are not alone’, which can remind you that there are hundreds of thousands of environmental organisations strung around the globe. ‘All together we can make a huge difference’ is a way of thinking that fosters a belief in ‘collective efficacy’ – the idea that if people work together a much greater outcome can be gained than if they all work in isolation. And then there’s the sort of thinking that has been sweeping the country thanks to Paul Kelly – ‘From little things big things grow’. This thinking helps us to see that change is often incremental – it is fine to sometimes start with little steps and progress to more difficult tasks until we reach the final goal’ (Blashki & Burke, 2009, unpublished manuscript).

Cognitive reappraisal and emotional expression are just two examples of strategies that can be used to deal with the feelings and thoughts that come up when you face up to climate change. There are many other ways, like cultivating gratitude, and gathering support for yourself, some of which are covered in the excellent publication (2013) by Psychologists for a Safe Climate called Let’s Speak about Climate Change.

Change is often incremental but as Paul Kelly said: "From little things big things grow" Flickr/TedXSydney CC BY NC ND 2.0

Problem focussed coping

The second major class of coping strategies that people employ to cope with distress are called problem-focussed strategies. These are ways of reducing the distress created by a problem by tackling the problem. Let’s see how this can be applied in the context of climate change.

A number of different researchers have investigated climate change coping strategies, and each seems to use slightly different ways of grouping and defining coping strategies. One strategy that is always included in their categorisations, however, is problem solving – in this context, this means the behaviours or actions that we can do to solve the problem of climate change. So we can confidently assume that this coping strategy is of central importance.

Researchers have found that engaging in mitigation behaviours – doing something to reduce your carbon footprint – is a significant coping strategy, with the action that people take seeming to help them manage their experienced distress. So this would include changing individual or household behaviours like using less water, turning down heaters, riding or using public transport, as well as participating in climate action groups, lobbying politicians and industry leaders etc. Climate action is definitely the number one behavioural strategy for managing climate change distress.

You don’t need to go far in the psychology literature to find a robust evidence base for the importance of action as a way of dealing with distress. Behavioural activation (getting a person to engage in activities, thereby counteracting the tendency to be inactive and to isolate themselves) is a tried and proven technique for treating depressive symptoms. Simply put, it is difficult to feel depressed if you are regularly engaging in activities that bring you a sense of accomplishment (and/or pleasure).

Psychologists Marc Pilisuk and Jamie Rowen, in their 2005 handbook Using Psychology to Help Abolish Nuclear Weapons, also point out the importance of action as a way of dealing with distressing feelings about a problem. Substitute ‘climate change’ for ‘nuclear war’ and you get the picture. They argue that participation in an activist group is beneficial to one's mental health and can serve as an antidote to depression and despair. “Participation in activity with others [to control the proliferation of the most destructive weapons known] can represent a confidence in overcoming deeply entrenched giants. It can make people more powerful in matters that count in their roles as parents and as citizens and give them a psychological sense of community and of empowerment. Psychological health requires such feelings of efficacy. Good mental health is not the absence of problems but rather the capacity to work on them constructively. Large threats to humanity can only be addressed by cooperative action and by working together with other caring people. This can be as rewarding as it is empowering. Cooperative action encourages creativity and aligns people with what is healthy in the world.”

What Pilisuk and Rowen are also highlighting is the importance of group action as compared to individual action. Of course, both are important, but it’s worth noting that taking climate action together with other people builds a sense of group efficacy, and can amplify the effect that you would have if you just work alone. It also invites another coping strategy, that of social support, so ends up ticking several boxes. By working together with like-minded others, we get support, ideas, reinforcement and encouragement, and build our identity of ourselves as someone who cares about the environment. Group approval and identification is a great source of reward.

And finally, taking action on climate change is also very achievable and measureable. Indeed, George Marshall, in Don’t Even Think About It reminds us that climate change stands out from all other global problems because our individual contributions can be measured down to the last gram. We cannot identify our contribution to any other wicked problem such as poverty, terrorism, or drug abuse – let alone quantify it. But we can with climate change. People often feel powerless in the face of climate change, when in fact there is no other issue over which we have more personal control or involvement. Marshall goes on to describe climate change as an informed choice between desirable and catastrophic outcomes. Inaction is itself a choice in favour of severe climate change. This is a pretty compelling reason to choose action!

The reality of climate change is actually very frightening. The projected environmental impacts of climate change will substantially change the natural environments and human-made environments everywhere on the globe. Climate change threatens the very way we live and everything that we have come to count upon. It is inevitable that facing this threat brings up a host of uncomfortable and upsetting emotions. In the safe climate psychologists’ words, it is important to stay alive to what is stirred up in us, rather than avoid it. Then these emotions can be used constructively to engage in what needs to be considered now and in the future to restore a safe climate.

References

Blashki, G. & Burke, S.A. (2009). A Climate Change of Mind. Unpublished manuscript.

Macy, J. & C. Johnstone (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy. Navato, CA: New World Library.

Moser, S. (2012). Getting real about it: Navigating the psychological and social demands of a world in distress. In: Sage Handbook on Environmental Leadership, Rigling Gallagher, Deborah, Richard N. L. Andrews, and Norman L. Christensen eds.

Reser, J.P., Bradley, G.L. & Ellul, M.C. (2012) Coping with climate change: Bringing psychology in from the cold. In B. Molinelli & V. Grimaldo (Eds) Handbook of the psychology of coping (pp 1-34). New York: Nova Science Publishers.

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Why is it important to know how people feel about climate change?

7/12/2015

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By Dr Susie Burke PhD, FAPS
Dr Susie Burke is a senior psychologist at the Australian Psychological Society working on the environment and disasters.A significant part of Dr Susie Burkes' work in the Psychology in the Public Interest team is to examine and promote the role that psychology can play in helping us understand the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change.. Her current areas of interest include psychosocial impacts of climate change, communicating about environmental problems, psychological barriers to climate change, coping with climate change, and promoting pro-environmental behaviour

Psychologists are deeply interested in how people feel about climate change for a number of reasons.

For those of us who are clinicians and therapists, trained to help people cope with distress, trauma, mental health problems, grief and loss, we have a good understanding of how bad it can feel, and how difficult it can be for people when they are suffering from depression and anxiety, or struggling with grief and loss, or feeling helpless and hopeless. Climate change can bring up all of these feelings.

Many people may feel seriously concerned, frightened, angry, pessimistic, distressed, or guilty in response to climate change. Qualitative research finds evidence of some people being deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration due to their inability to feel they are making a difference in stopping climate change. New terms such as ‘eco-anxiety’ or ‘climate change anxiety’ are sometimes used to describe this.

For people directly affected by climate change in the form of extreme weather event disasters, the feelings can be very intense. Depression, PTSD and complicated grief reactions are the most common mental health problems, and many many more people who do not end up with a diagnosis of depression or PTSD, nonetheless end up with heightened distress, grief, stress and strain.

For people directly affected by climate change distress, grief and strain are common Flickr/Jacob Bøtter CC BY 2.0

Many of the feelings that arise in response to climate change are caused by climate change’s more gradual impacts on the environment, human systems and infrastructure. These include things like increased average temperatures, spread of disease, changes in agricultural conditions, associated increases in food insecurity, sea level rise, increased extreme weather, associated increases in displaced people, or greater wear and tear on infrastructure and associated increases in disruptions to transport, energy supply, cost of living etc. The potential impacts of these gradual changes range from mild stress responses to chronic stress and significant mental health problems.

These feelings matter because they reduce people’s wellbeing and quality of life. This is obvious at the pointy end of the scale if a person is suffering from a profound anxiety or depression. But even at non-clinical levels of worry and distress these feelings can interfere with people’s capacity to get on with their lives in an optimal manner. They can also lead to flow-on effects like strain on relationships, higher levels of stress, increased substance use, family breakdown, reduced social participation, decreased productivity. And there are even community health impacts, like an increased likelihood of criminal behaviour, violence and aggression as community members experience various stressors related to climate change. So feelings matter because they lead to increased suffering for individuals and communities.

Environmental psychologists would give an additional answer as to why it’s important to know how people feel about climate change. Knowing how climate change affects us psychologically is profoundly important for what people do next. How people think about and react to direct threats like extreme weather, or their anxiety about future threats to the environment, or their distress about vicarious threats to other people in other places, or their existential fears about changes to life as they know it, are important factors in the behaviours that follow. People need to be able to manage these feelings so that they can properly accept the reality of climate change and not avoid it. Coping with the feelings we have about climate change is very important so that:

we don’t become overwhelmed by these feelings
we don’t try to avoid the feelings and hence the problem
we can stay engaged with the problem of climate change
we can keep functioning well whilst accepting the reality of climate change, both in our everyday lives, as well as on the changes we are making to reduce the threat of climate change.

Taking environmentally responsible action is one way to reduce the anxiety and distress about climate change Flickr/Timothy Takemoto CC BY 2.0

People can, of course, react to the threat of climate change in all sorts of unhelpful ways – they can try to minimise the threat, distract themselves, blame ‘the authorities’ for the disaster, put all their hope in silver bullet solutions, become dependent on others like the government or other countries to solve the problem, or resigned to the disaster.

Several recent publications have shed light on this human capacity to dodge the problem. George Marshall’s book ‘Don’t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to avoid climate change’ is one example. Per Stoknes has also written about this in his 2015 publication ‘what we think about when we try not to think about global warming.

Whilst some of these more avoidant responses might be temporarily soothing for the individual, they are hopeless for solving climate change.

We know from the research on climate change coping strategies, that there are also several adaptive ways in which people can respond to distressed feelings about climate change. Taking environmentally responsible action is one potent way to manage and reduce the anxiety and distress about climate change. People feel empowered and more hopeful and optimistic when they take action, or work with others to address climate change. Other good climate change coping techniques identified in the psychological research include social support-seeking, becoming more attentive to the issue, accepting climate change as a threat, shifting values to a more “pro-environmental” position, expressive coping (finding ways of expressing one’s feelings about climate change as a way of moving through those feelings), and problem solving.

This is why knowing about how people are feeling about climate change is so important. We need to know how we feel so that we can help ourselves and others to respond to these feelings adaptively – in ways that minimise the threat of climate change, at the same time as coping with the feelings.
Now, the all-important next question is ‘how can we actually help ourselves and others to move in the direction of adaptive strategies for coping with climate change?’ This curly question is the subject of the next blog…

A selection of ITHYF letters were shown during the APS annual conference at the Gold Coast in October 2015. A number of psychologists were invited to pen their own letters. View them here.

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Climate Change is Boring

10/8/2015

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Guest Blogger Dr Rod Lamberts

Dr Rod Lamberts is Deputy Director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science. He is also half of the co-hosts of KindaThinky and would really (really) like to encourage Sydney people to come to their one-off Sydney show on August 19 (proudly supported by the ANU Colleges of Science).

When it comes to climate change, I’m pretty sure there are really only three types of people.
Those who believe we’re buggering things up, those who don’t believe we’re buggering things up, and those who don’t know (and maybe don’t give a toss) either way.

Sure there are sub-groups, cliques and factions, but these are the big three. And nowadays it’s clear to me they all have one fundamental thing in common. For all these groups, hearing more science information about climate change makes no practical difference. The acceptors keep accepting, the deniers keep denying, and the ‘meh’ crowd keep on meh-ing.

So why are we still spraying the media waves with public communications full of climate science?

Most answers I‘ve heard boil down to this: “climate change is important”. I agree. I really, really agree. But it seems 'important' not only means critical or urgent, it also means serious, solemn, and science.

If something is ‘important’, does that have to mean we must deliver dry, detailed (science) data about it? Is the most important information about climate change still science information? If your goal is to engage people on climate change, and perhaps goad more – or different – action, the answer is a resounding no.

Borrowing the words of Fred Pearce in his recent New Scientist Opinion piece (11 July), “it’s time for a new act”. And that act is not about science. It’s not more serious and earnest lists of the latest horrible facts. No more spouting apocalyptic warnings about how screwed we are (even if they are backed up by reams of robust and valid research). Fred suggests scientists should back the hell off, and let “artists, lawyers, priest and playwrights” take over.

I thoroughly agree.

Two important things about the message from climate science need acknowledging now more than ever. One, there’s enough of it now to be very confident that things have to be done. Two, using climate science reports and facts is no longer the way to engage people and nudge them to action. Repeating this ‘throw more facts at people’ pattern of communication, and expecting things to become different is pretty much the definition of insanity, and it’s had its day.

has climate change become boring? Flickr/Bruce Edwards CC BY-NC 2.0

So if communication, discussion and debate about climate change in the public sphere are to have any hope of cutting through, we could do much worse than look to our entertainers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos reboot offers a gentle gateway drug experience for the entertainment approach to climate science. His segment explaining the difference between climate and weather is easy to understand, it’s a bit cute, and there isn't a smidgeon of formal data in sight.

But we can go further. Much, much further.

In a recent piece by Megan Garber in The Atlantic, she explores the idea of comedians as the new public intellectuals. As she puts it, “People look to Amy Schumer and her fellow jokers not just to make fun of the world, but to make sense of it. And maybe even to help fix it.” Yes, yes we do.

So how’s about we get people laughing about climate change and how we handle it? Take this by now perhaps over-shared example where John Oliver shows us what a climate ‘debate’ would look like if we actually had 3 deniers and 97 scientists in the room together. It’s a great sight gag, and makes the point better than any hard data ever would. It’s also hilarious.

And humour cuts through. Humour can highlight the gravity of an issue at least as well as a serious broadcast, but without having to make us feel horrible, and without boring the snot out of us with facts and figures.

Humour switches us on, boring switches us off. And for climate action, we want people switched on.

Humour can also bring us together in numbers that are normally the preserve of wars and major sporting events. In the build-up to the US mid-term elections in 2010, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert held their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in Washington DC. The point of the rally was to target “…the caustic level of discourse in Washington, and its nasty echoes on cable television's 24-hour news cycle. Stewart said that noisy debate obscured a reality that he perceived: that everyone throughout the country had found a way to work together.” CBS news estimated 215,000 people turned up on the day. More than two hundred thousand! Washington’s entire population is only somewhere around 650,000.

Humour engages and excites us. It lets us play and explore ideas. It allows us to challenge the status quo in ways other interactions and communications rarely do, without shutting people down (at best), or bringing them into direct conflict (at worst).

So let’s bring humour and climate change together. Let’s embrace Randy Olson’s early attempt to lighten-up climate change communication, and by doing this maybe make more people want to engage with it.

Of course there’s no guarantee that laughing at the state of the climate will lead to some watershed in climate action. And just like communicating facts and figures, it wont be everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s pretty clear that sticking with our current earnestness is getting us nowhere fast. And that isn't funny.

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Imagine a better world in which we tackle the challenges of the 21st century

17/3/2015

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Guest Blogger Professor Mark Maslin

Professor Mark Maslin is based at University College London. His research ranges from early human evolution to defining the Anthropocene, or from the global green economy to climate change and global health. Oxford University Press has recently published the third edition of his “Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction”.

Flickr/Bruce Irving CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The twenty first century is the ‘human century’ because of the huge global challenges we face. I would suggest global poverty, global security, global inequality, environmental degradation and climate change are the most pressing. Of these climate change is the most insidious as it makes all the other worse. So our overarching challenge this century is to build win-win solutions that tackle these multiple challenges. These are easy to conceptualise and design but of course much harder to implement given all the vested interests created by our warped global economy.

So let us investigate the state of our planet starting with human health around the globe. Every year 7 million children die needlessly due to preventable disease and starvation. 700 million people go to bed every night feeling hungry and almost billion people still do not have access to clean safe drinking water. This is despite the fact that we have enough food and water for all 7 billion people, but our political-economic system means that many people simply cannot afford them. Every year there is a drop in the total number of people in extreme poverty but the challenge is exacerbated by the fact that by 2050 there could be at least an extra 2 billion people on the planet and most of those in the very poorest countries.

If we look at the Earth’s major biogeochemical cycles all have been profoundly altered by humanity. In the early 20th century invention of the Haber-Bosch process allowing the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia for use as fertilizer has altered the global nitrogen cycle so radically that the nearest suggested comparison over 2 billion years ago. Human actions have increased atmospheric CO2 by 40% to a level not seen for at least the last million years, and may have even delayed the next ice age. This has increased the acidity of the ocean faster than anytime in the last 50 million years

Human action also impacts on non-human life. The productivity of the Earth appears to be relatively constant; however, the appropriation of a third of it for human use reduces that available for millions of other species on Earth. Land use conversion for food, fuel, fibre and fodder, combined with targeted hunting and harvesting, has resulted in species extinctions some 100 to 1000 times higher than background rates, and is the start of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. We have also moved crops, domesticated animals and pathogens around the world leading to a unique global homogenisation of Earth’s biota. Human actions also constitute Earth’s most important evolutionary pressure. The development of diverse products, including antibiotics, pesticides, and novel genetically-engineered organisms, combined with intense harvesting and climate change, are all dramatically altering evolution on Earth. So important is the effect of humanity that we are now seen as a geological power on the scale of plate tectonics or a meteorite impact. Prompting many to call for the period of time to be defined as the Anthropocene.

Humanity is now seen as a large scale geological power Flickr/Arbyreed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Considering the huge influence humanity is having on the planet it would be reasonable to assume that we would make some some attempt to manage and distribute fairly the Earth’s resources. However this contradicts the dominant geopolitical and economic philosophy of the West, namely neoliberalism. Neoliberalism encapsulates a set of beliefs which include: the need for markets to be free, State intervention should be as small as possible, strong private property rights, low taxation and individualism. Underlying neoliberalism is the seductive view that it provides market-based solutions to all our ills, and enables everyone to become more wealthy. This trickle down effect has been the central mantra of neoliberals for the last 35 years.

If we want to eradicate extreme poverty at the current rate of trickle down and bring the living allowance of the very poorest people in the world up to $1.25 per day it would require global GDP to increase by 15 times taking over 100 years. Under the current economic system this would require huge increase in consumption levels. This all requires cheap energy, which will mainly come from fossil fuels which will accelerate climate change and more land for agricultural products driving deforestation and environmental degradation making those poorest of people more vulnerable to extreme weather events.

So the understanding of the World’s current and future social and environmental challenges suggest the very economic theories that have dominated global economics for the last 35 years are not fit for purpose. But do not misunderstand me this is not a rant against capitalism but against the extreme pervert form of capitalism called neoliberalism. What is required is proactive and aggressive redistribution of wealth both within and between countries. This could be via provisioning of free essential services such as access to clean water, health care and education. Progressive taxation is essential to rebalance inequalities. This in turn reduces cost as it has been shown that the smaller the social divisions within a country the lower the health care costs and the higher the longevity. Outdated major international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation need to be dismantled and new governance structures fit for the twenty first century created to accelerate sustainable development. This is where academics can make a fundamental difference by envisioning new political systems of governance, which enable collective action and more equal distribution of wealth, resources and opportunities. After reading this blog ask yourself one question ‘why are we constantly told we cannot have a more equal, fair and sustainable global society?’

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How to deal with a climate sceptic - a personal view

16/1/2015

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Guest Blogger Dr Tim Senior

Dr Tim Senior is a doctor who works in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. He writes on climate change and health, among other things, and won the Gavin Mooney Memorial Essay competition for an article on climate change and equity.

Flickr/Spunkinator CC BY-NC-SA

If you’ve spent any time on the internet looking into climate change, then you may well have come across people who don’t believe in climate change. I have become increasingly concerned about the effects of climate change over the last few years, especially the effects on health – my day job is as a family doctor, and climate change will make us all sick in ways I cannot fix. Spending a bit of my time on Twitter, I do come across arguments between climate realists and climate denialists. Much of this argument is a futile waste of time.

What you want to do

It looks like arguments between climate denialists and other people are arguments about the science, and that is what sceptics want everyone to think. It is really tempting to keep on debunking the nonsense by telling them what the science shows.

You will also get really frustrated, and will want to start SHOUTING WITH YOUR CAPS LOCK ON and insulting the sceptic.

These two things are what climate sceptics want you to do. They want you to make it look as if the science is in doubt and that you need to fall back on insults to make your case. Therefore, however, much you want to, don’t do it.

Why this is not a science debate

Anyone who is really actually doing science or wanting to debate the science will be prepared to change their mind according to what the evidence shows. Given that 97% of the world’s scientists have no doubt about climate change or that humans are causing it, it’s a really really big call to change your mind in the opposite direction.

In any debate about science, it’s worth setting out at the start what evidence would cause you to change your mind.

For me, I’d need a demonstration of the following:

1.     That the world isn’t getting warmer. (And this would need to be shown across a range of time series,
not just a single cherry picked one) and use a variety of sources (not just a single one that might cast
doubt)

2.     That carbon dioxide isn’t increasing.

3.     That the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere is being removed somehow (as it doesn’t
matter what proportion of CO2 is produced by humans, if we are continually adding it, it will go up –
like having a dripping tap into a full sink).

4.     That we’ve got the physics of carbon dioxide all wrong and it doesn’t act as a greenhouse gas.

So ask your friendly climate sceptic that if they believe they are debating the science, they will be prepared to change their mind if the evidence backs it up. What would the science need to show if they were to change their mind on climate change?

If they ever give an answer to this (a long shot – climate change denial cannot be based on evidence or they would already be convinced) then you can show them the science in that area and see how they decide to dismiss it!

Explaining the consensus

Anyone who does not believe in climate change needs to explain why 97% of scientists working across a whole range of fields know it is happening. They need to explain why every major scientific society, body or organisation say climate change is real. They need to explain why scientists say there is now no doubt. So ask them how they explain this.

I don’t know how 97% of the world’s climate scientists could be wrong about what they’ve devoted their life to studying, but these may be some of the answers people come up with. (I’m sure there will be heaps more that make even less sense).

I just don’t trust science

Which would make me wonder what else they don't trust scientists on. The shape of the Earth? The way our eyes work? The fact that the shape of aeroplane wings can generate enough upward force to overcome gravity? Electrical conduction? We don’t really get to pick and choose our reality. The computer being used for the discussion is not powered by faeries and unicorns.

Scientists need to toe the line to get grants

If you have the evidence to show that a major part of the climate science is flawed, then all you need to do is publish it in a scientific journal. If you really do have the evidence, then you’ll get it into a major high impact journal, because overturning previous wisdom using evidence is what science does and how it works. Scientists love coming to new understandings, find it really really exciting to discover something new. (For example, read about the discovery of the structure of DNA to get a feel for how exciting that was. But they did use imagination and an understanding of the current science, backed up by proper real evidence.)

Strangely, organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs, the Heartland Institute do seem to have a lot of money given to them by companies dependent on fossil fuel, but they don’t use this to fund actual science, just to fund opinion pieces by friendly bloggers. Strange that, if they really thought that the evidence would show there was no climate change.

Science doesn’t work by consensus

No, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t explain why there is a consensus. The presence of a consensus doesn’t show that the consensus is wrong.

Look at Galileo. A lone voice who showed all that group-think was wrong

He did. And he did it using evidence. He was opposed by the Catholic Church who believed in the literal truth of the creation story as described by Genesis. And perhaps even 97% of bishops believed in that account. But Galileo managed to point out through careful observation of the actual world, using new technology that the actual real world didn’t fit with the Genesis account.

Climate Change may have had its Galileo moment. That was when the evidence showed that CO2 did act as a greenhouse gas, and that our production of lots and lots of it did warm the planet, with consequent destabilising effects on our climate. That’s where the evidence points, in the same way the evidence pointed in the direction that Galileo observed.

Also, just because Galileo was right, doesn’t mean that every theory challenging the mainstream is right. You can tell the difference between those that are right and those that aren’t. And that is from the actual evidence.

It’s all a great big conspiracy

If it is a conspiracy we’ll need some evidence for that, won’t we. Just saying it doesn’t make it true. And it would have to be a pretty amazing conspiracy. It would have to include 97% of the world’s scientists. Maybe I’m in the wrong field, but I certainly missed the e-mail on that one. It would have to include 97% of the world’s scientists without any major leaks of what was being discussed, or whistle-blowers. It wasn’t even mentioned in the Edward Snowdon or WikiLeaks revelations, which would be a real achievement. Given that governments haven’t managed to do that, if 97% of the world’s scientists have managed a conspiracy that huge without leaving a trail of paper or a trail of disgruntled followers, perhaps we should invite them to form a world government, because they would clearly be better at it than current governments.

On the other hand, if it were a conspiracy, they’ve done a pretty awful job of actually convincing governments to change. A conspiracy so powerful it can recruit scientists from every field in every country, and not have any significant evidence showing what it’s done, and yet so stupid it hasn’t managed to recruit anyone with significant political power? That’s a really really strange argument to run, and would need some explaining!

How do I deal with climate sceptics?

I ask questions. Don’t tell them facts, don’t insult, just ask questions and hand them some rope. Be genuinely curious about their answers – the more you ask, the harder it is to maintain their position. At some point they have to bump up against reality and it looks pretty stupid.

Here are some questions to start:

·       As you’ve looked into this in some depth, what would the evidence have to show for you to change
your mind?

·       How do you explain the fact that 97% of scientists working across all areas of the field think climate
change is happening and we are causing it?

Don’t shout facts. And instead of letting your exasperation show, handwrite a letter and send it to Is this how you feel? And share any answers you get in your discussions. Some of them are bound to be funny!

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So they’ve studied Climate Change for a while?

23/12/2014

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Flickr/Paul Mazumdar CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

All the scientists that have penned letters for this site have a sound understanding of Climate Change. Some have spent years designing models to predict changing climate, others, years investigating the implications for animal life. More still have been exploring a range of other topics concerning the causes and implications of a changing climate.

As a minimum, they’ve all achieved a PhD in their area of expertise.

The amount of time it takes to achieve this qualification varies depending on the university and specific focus of study, but for Australia, the process is essentially this:

First, you need to complete an undergraduate degree with a focus on some aspect of science. Biology, maths, physics, medicine etc., whatever strikes your fancy. This degree takes three or four years. Then, depending on the focus of your research, you may need to complete an Honours or Masters course. This is another year or two of study and research.

Next is a PhD, a further three to five years of unique and original research covering new scientific ground. Already we’re getting up to around 8 years of study and research as a minimum.

Many of the researchers that have contributed to this site have continued on to receive the title of Research Fellow, Associate Professor or Professor, this requires many more years of research. These scientists continue to investigate new discoveries to increase their own understanding of their field and publish their findings for their colleagues to learn from and build on.

This is their job, it’s their lives.

Consider Professor Andrew Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. He completed his PhD in 1988, back when everyone was listening to their Walkmans and watching Magnum P.I. He’s been studying climate modeling for over a quarter of a century. He has published over 140 scientific papers on the topic and written about 20 book chapters. Professor Pitman has been studying the climate for a large part of his life. He understands climate change and the models that predict this change.

Then there’s Professor Tony McMichael who sadly passed away earlier this year. His area of expertise was the population health impacts of climate change. His publications include over 300 peer-reviewed papers and 160 book chapters. He understands what impacts climate change will have on humanity.

And Professor Lesley Hughes, she has contributed to and reviewed multiple reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). An Ecologist, she has spent years exploring how a changing climate will affect hundreds of different species. She understands just how dire climate change could be for the planets biodiversity.

These researchers are in a better position than anyone to voice concern over climate change.

We owe it to them to listen.

Click here to see Andrew, Tony and Lesley's letters.

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