Climate Communications - Good and Ugly

This series of three posters maps climate communication by means of a timeline, a network visualization and a strategy map. The work illustrates
relationships between climate discourses, prominent actors and major organizations participating in climate communication including science institutions, academic institutions, media organizations, think tanks and government agencies – along with the interests and funders linked to these organizations. Various discourses are mapped including climate science; counter-movements (contrarianism); ecological modernization, neoliberalism and corporate capture; and social movements (climate justice). The timeline visualizes the historical processes that have lead to the growth of various ways of communicating climate change. The network visualization illustrates relationships between actors and prominent discourses. The strategy map displays methods used within four discursive realms.

The posters are still work in process. They will be presented at the ‘Changing Climate Communication’ conference in July 2014. Feedback from this presentation will inform a final stage of the visualizations, to be completed in September 2014.

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"An examination of how proposed social studies textbooks for Texas public schools address climate change reveals distortions and bias that misrepresent the broad scientific consensus on the phenomenon," charged the Texas Freedom Network and the National Center for Science Education in a joint press release issued on September 15, 2014. Accompanying the press release was a brief analysis (PDF) of the treatment of climate change in the textbooks.

Among the most problematic claims about climate science in the social studies textbooks submitted for state adoption: a statement that fossil fuel emissions have caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica; a claim that scientists "disagree about what is causing climate change"; and a quotation from a notorious climate change denial organization presented in rebuttal of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.

"The scientific debate over whether climate change is happening and who is responsible has been over for years, and the science textbooks Texas adopted last year make that clear," explained NCSE's Minda Berbeco. "Climate change will be a key issue that future citizens of Texas will need to understand and confront, and they deserve social studies textbooks that reinforce good science and prepare them for the challenges ahead."

But the social studies textbooks under consideration too often fail to reach that goal, added Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. "In too many cases we're seeing publishers shade and even distort facts to avoid angering politicians who vote on whether their textbooks get approved," Miller said. "Texas kids deserve textbooks that are based on sound scholarship, not political biases."

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