Photo by Bombardier, Creative Commons.

It’s been common to blame the media and global-warming “deniers” for the public’s confusion about climate change.  

The media, it has been said, feel they must always represent opposite sides of opinion. It’s a laudable goal, but not if it results in a distorted picture of scientific consensus.

I.e. two “experts” presented as equals, one whose statements represent a position a hypothetical 90 percent of the scientific community would agree with, and another whose statements represent the thoughts of a spare 5 percent.   

In such cases, media efforts to produce balance lead to accidental misrepresentations. The “denialists,” on the other hand, are accused of deliberate distortions. 

A new article in the most recent issue of Science, however, suggests there may be more to blame for public confusion about climate change than inaccurate portrayals of scientific opinion. 

The article – “Risk Communication on Climate: Mental Models and Mass Balance” – links a failure to perceive the urgency of reducing carbon emissions to a poor understanding of stocks and flows.

Stocks and flows, as the author John D. Sterman points out, are all about the concept of accumulation, which is a common everyday experience:

“Our bathtubs accumulate the inflow of water through the faucet less the outflow through the drain, our bank accounts accumulate deposits less withdrawals … Yet, despite their ubiquity, research shows that people have difficulty relating into and out of a stock to the level of a stock …,” Sterman writes.

Sterman, along with colleague Booth Sweeney, tested a group of highly educated MIT students’ understanding of stocks and flows as it relates to climate change. 

To do so, they presented the students with a description of the relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and GHG concentrations in the atmosphere.  The students were then asked to outline the emissions path needed to stabilize GHG levels in the atmosphere. 

An astounding 84 percent, however, came up with emissions plans that would fail to stabilize GHG levels.  By controlling the flow of emissions, the students mistakenly thought they could have an immediate effect on the stock of atmospheric CO2. In reality, the effect of emissions reductions would take years to show up.

Sterman suggests it’s this kind of faulty reasoning that leads people to support a “wait and see” or “go slow” approach to emissions reductions.  Such an approach, he notes, is a mistake when dealing with a complex, dynamic system, such as the climate, where a cause can take quite some time to produce an effect.

In the last few weeks alone, news has surfaced about a number of climate-themed art projects and exhibits.

Perhaps coolest of all – no pun intended – is Cape Farewell, an organization that sponsors expeditions of scientists and artists into the Arctic to promote a cultural understanding of climate change.  The latest expedition came to an end on October 6, after bringing some big name stars face to face with the first front of climate change. 

Musicians KT Tunstall, Jarvis Cocker, Feist, Laurie Anderson and Martha Wainwright, among others, were on the crew list.  Check out Jarvis Cocker of Pulp describing his experience:

Huge institutional efforts that look to art and artifacts to educate about climate change are also underway.

At the American Museum of Natural History in New York, a new exhibit just opened that aims to provide people with context about why climate change is happening and what it might mean.

The exhibit’s introduction reads: “Yes, climate has changed throughout Earth’s long history, but this time is different. For the first time, complex human societies are facing the consequences of climate change worldwide. Plant and animal species already threatened by fragmented habitats are feeling the impact. And for the first time, humans are causing it.”

Other projects are using art as a way to give people a way to relate to climate statistics and think about their own responsibility.  For example, an installation titled “Nine Planets Wanted!” was on display in the lobby of the United Nations building last month.  

Beanbags at the "Nine Planets Wanted" exhibit.

It presented visitors with beanbag chairs of different sizes to draw comparisons between the CO2 emissions of different regions and countries.  

According to the exhibit:  “If every person on earth generated as much CO2 as the average North American, emissions would be nine times the sustainable level.”  And: “An average air conditioning unit in Florida emits more CO2 in a year than a person in Afghanistan or Cambodia during their lifetime.  An average dishwasher in Europe emits as much CO2 in a year as three Ethiopians.”

The U.N. is also sponsoring an art project called “Paint for the Planet,” through which children have been asked to create artworks about their hopes and fears for the planet.  The project is the first in its new “UNite to combat climate change campaign,” an effort to encourage world leaders to agree on a new climate-change plan to take effect after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  Close to 200 government leaders will meet in Copenhagen in December 2009 to discuss a plan, and the UNite campaign will be ongoing until then.  

Meanwhile, Oxfam America, an international relief agency, has also launched a project called “Climate Change on Canvas.”  For the project, artists have been asked to create works about how poor communities throughout the world are being affected by climate change.  The commissioned artworks will be presented at the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Poznan, Poland, in December. 

Climate change and art are meeting up on the street level too.  In New York, the artist Joshua Allen Harris has constructed a polar bear made out of plastic bags that comes to life every time a subway passes.  The bear sits atop a subway grate, and as the trains gust by below, it deflates and inflates.

And to the south, in Washington D.C., Greenpeace has teamed up with the street artist Mark Jenkins to deploy homeless polar bear sculptures throughout the capitol. 

One of Mark Jenkins' polar bears in Washington, D.C.

According to the blog RealClimate, a new survey about the state of climate science is making the rounds.  The survey – the third of its kind – is being sent to scientists in an effort to assess the state of climate science.

Obviously, its relevance will depend on how widely it’s distributed, as well as on the validity of its questions and multiple-choice answers.  If done well, it could point out areas where more research needs to be done and more funding needs to be provided.

Looking over some of the questions, though, got me thinking less about how the scientists will respond to the questions, and more about the state of climate literacy in general. 

So, let’s just take one question – No. 15 – and test our own chutzpah. 

“The current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of:

- turbulence
- surface albedo
- land surface processes
- sea ice
- greenhouse gases emitted from anthropogenic sources”

The participating scientists are asked to rate how much is known about each of these things on a scale of one to seven, with one corresponding to ‘strongly disagree’ and seven to ‘strongly agree.’

Since we’re not climatologists, though, the question is how well most of us non-experts would do at a survey asking us to define how each of these things impacts the climate. 

I can get through the list, but it would make me a little red in the face to publish my answers.  And, after conducting a very unscientific survey of family and friends, I’m beginning to wonder how many lay people would be able to get through it at all.  

So, I will leave you with two questions: Does our education system cover the basic climate bases?  And, if it doesn’t, how are we to evaluate policies proposed to deal with potential changes in climate?