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Collection: Flashcards

Sightline Flashcards are quick reference tools for effective communications strategies. They’re messaging memos distilled from experts and savvy communicators—to help you do your job and save you time.

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Sightline Flashcards are quick reference tools for effective communications strategies. They’re messaging memos distilled from experts and savvy communicators—to help you do your job and save you time. The Flashcards focus on values-based communication: strategies for talking about important policies or issue solutions in terms of shared values. Browse the Flashcards to gain insight into particular sustainability issues or simply to hone your values-based communications strategies.

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The Art of Talking Climate Science

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Let’s face it; nobody speaks in perfect, clear, stirring, and memorable soundbites. But scientists are particularly apt to load their communications with so many caveats and so much detail that non-scientists have a hard time determining whether they’ve said anything definitive at all!

Scientists have good reason to be cautious in their communications—and in a politically charged environment, climate scientists are particularly gun shy. Too much simplification—let alone personal or emotional appeals—may tread too far outside the scientific norms of dispassionate objectivity, and put a scientist’s credibility on the line. For many scientists, the moral dimensions of their work are self-evident. But articulating them is risky.

The problem is that political opponents of climate action often portray the caveats and caution as evidence that scientists are unsure of their findings.

So, what should a scientist do?

Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Jay Hassol offer some tips for science communicators, along with a good overview the most common pitfalls of climate communications and the political and cultural context in which climate scientists must operate.

Four of Somerville and Hassol’s recommendations seem most important and most appropriate for scientists. I’ve boiled them down here.

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The Art of Talking Climate Science

1. Emphasize what is known. Stop leading with unknowns, caveats, and disclaimers. What you start with is what people remember. The rest can come later.

2. Invert the standard order for reporting. Start with the main point, then give the background. Say why it matters up front.

3. Less is more. Stick to simple, clear messages about what’s important and repeat them often.

4. Stop speaking in code. Choose plain language over technical terms, insider jargon, and acronyms. (e.g. Human-caused, not anthropogenic.)

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The Entire IPCC Report in 19 Illustrated Haiku

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Reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can be daunting, even for science and policy insiders. The full Physical Science Assessment, the first installment of the Fifth Assessment Report (pdf), released in manuscript form earlier this year, is over 2,000 pages long.

And even the Summary for Policymakers, rather optimistically referred to as a “brochure,” is a dense 27 pages.

What if we could communicate the essence of this important information in plain language and pictures? Well, that’s just what one Northwest oceanographer has done. He’s distilled the entire report into 19 illustrated haiku.

The result is stunning, sobering, and brilliant. It’s poetry. It’s a work of art. But it doubles as clear, concise, powerful talking points and a compelling visual guide.

Talking Politics on Turkey Day

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Elaine Mejia, Senior Program Associate at Public Works—a communications think tank fostering a more positive national discourse and public will around government and taxes—reminds us that turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce are, unfortunately, often served up with a “heaping side dish of heated, unpleasant conversation about government and politics.”

Whether it’s the wine or the tryptophan or just…family dynamics, these holiday discussions can go terribly wrong. But with a solid game plan, we can all do our part to keep Turkey Day festive and, just possibly, while we’re at it, make a little progress reinforcing government as our best tool for coming together and making everybody’s lives better.

Of course every good quarterback knows delivery is key—and that means finesse. It’s a reminder that we can foul out too soon if we let our tone get angry or accusatory or defensive.

Anyway, the rule for talking politics at Thanksgiving is that it’s not about winning—or even about touchdowns or tackles—it’s about a productive conversation that moves the whole team forward. (Mejia’s football analogy should get her an MVP.)

I recommend reading the entire pre-game pep talk over at Public Works. But here’s a run-down of day’s best plays:

Channeling Churchill on Climate Change

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Channeling Churchill on climate change?

Winston Churchill was “lucky” enough to live during a period of history when the enemies of freedom, justice, peace, and stability were recognizable villains with armies and mustaches. The existential threat posed by climate change is far more abstract. It makes for a fight that’s tough to rally people around.

Churchill isn’t with us today to weigh in on the dangers, upheaval—economic, cultural, geo-political, and otherwise—and costs to human life, health, and well-being posed by climate change, but what if he were? How would he talk about it? In the face of Nazi aggression, “Britain became doggedly focused and swung behind a campaign virtually without parallel.” The United States soon followed suit. How would Britain’s wartime prime minister mobilize the public around climate solutions?

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What Can Climate Scientists Learn from Lady Gaga?

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Rolling Stone has named Joe Romm “one of the 100 people who are changing America.” Time Magazine identified him as the “web’s most influential climate change blogger.” If you don’t follow his coverage of climate science, solutions, communications, and politics at ClimateProgress.org, you should.

Romm’s latest book is about rhetoric. It’s a handbook for communicators. He wants environmentalists, climate scientists, politicos, and anybody else trying to do good in the world, to get better at speaking, listening and changing minds. He wants us to grab attention with the most “eye-popping headlines, catchy catch-phrases, and sweetest tweets.”

Why listen to Romm on rhetoric? He didn’t win his blogger celebrity by sticking to the communications norms of his fellow physicists—or fellow policy wonks for that matter! (All due respect to both!)

He knows how to get traffic and communicate complicated concepts in compelling ways. He attributes the disproportionate success of his blog—and especially his much-clicked and shared headlines and tweets—to his use of classical rhetoric’s figures of speech, including simple, short, declarative language, puns, irony, alliteration, sarcasm, repetition, and metaphor.

Of course, rhetoric gets a bad rap. Today, the word conjures negative associations to spin, big words and hot air. But, as Romm points out, rhetoric is simply language intelligence—the art of putting language to work to get attention and appeal to both the heart and mind with words. It’s going for the gut, not just the intellect. It’s telling the most credible, memorable, and persuasive stories and framing the debate on your terms by employing the right metaphors. It’s wowing people, “standing out like a peacock” in a world of information overload.

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Are You Contagious…Enough?

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I don’t know anybody working in communications who doesn’t frequently ponder what magical, mythical, elusive characteristics make some content “go viral.” It’s kittens, right? But kittens alone can’t deliver. Just think of all the gazillions of adorable kitten videos that don’t get millions of views or shares or likes.

Whether it’s political messages, videos, or memes, or ideas that spread like wildfire via word of mouth, some things catch on while others don’t. So, is it just luck? Humor? Pulling at our heartstrings? A good story?

Is there a calculus for contagiousness?

These are exactly the questions Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade trying to answer (he’s a disciple of Chip Heath of Made to Stick fame). Berger studies why people share some things rather than others—a.k.a. the psychology of social transmission.

Turns out there is a science to it. Berger and his team have analyzed thousands of pieces of online content and tens of thousands of products and brands in an attempt to understand why some things make the most-emailed list or get talked about.

Do You Speak the Language of Opportunity?

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In the US, the ideal of opportunity for all is deeply embedded in our national consciousness. Think: “Land of Opportunity” and the “American Dream.” The American promise that everyone has a fair shot has shaped our national identity—and has informed our proudest moments and most righteous laws.

But opportunity has been living through some dark decades—times when individualistic narratives such as “family values” and “big government” and “personal responsibility” have drowned out the community-minded themes of equal opportunity that helped spawn the New Deal and the civil rights movement.

To help get public discourse—as well as public policy—back on the right track, an organization called The Opportunity Agenda has issued a new toolkit for elevating a narrative about opportunity, addressing issues ranging from civil and human rights, racial and economic justice, housing, employment, and criminal justice, to education, immigration, and health, safety, and environmental protection.

The Basics: Climate and crazy weather

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Drought devastated vast swaths of the continent this year. Wildfires raged. More recently, Colorado got more rain in one work week than it often gets in entire years, causing flooding that washed away homes, roads, and bridges in Boulder, Colorado, and the surrounding area. The flood killed at least eight people and left hundreds unaccounted for. The rainfall has been called Biblical—and that’s by the National Weather Service which typically doesn’t editorialize. So, what do we make of all this destruction that seems out of the ordinary, but is often explained away as a fluke, as the result of natural variation, or as “historically bad luck,” as one Time editor dismissively put it?

All those factors—and others—certainly play a role in extreme weather. But the fact is that by changing the climate with carbon pollution we’re pushing our luck.

Little good can come from these catastrophes. But, at the very least, one hopes that out of the destruction and heartbreak will rise a frank discussion about climate change. But there’s work to be done to make that happen. As Steve Hendricks points out, if you run an online search for “Colorado flooding” and “climate change” or “Colorado flooding” and “global warming” “you’ll see that virtually none of our nation’s big newspapers or influential websites have a thing to say on the matter.”

But, how do you talk about it when the science is complicated and the politics are so charged?

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Monster Wildfires and Climate Change

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Wildfire rages in somebody's backyard

Last summer the Taylor Bridge Fire outside Cle Elum, Washington, raged across 36 square miles of parched, crispy pine forest. It destroyed more than 60 homes and hundreds of families were evacuated. In the fire’s path was the 1890s homestead where my grandparents lived when I was a kid—a place where I made some of my fondest childhood memories. Even though our family no longer owns the place, it broke my heart to think of my old stomping grounds—the 120 year-old barn, the sun-darkened planks of the little granary—going up in flames. The fire devoured a colleague’s family cabin on the same hillside.

And then a couple weeks ago, I anxiously awaited news from my aunt and cousins who were hunkered down in their Hailey and Ketchum, Idaho, homes watching as a fiery apocalypse crept closer across the steep, dry hills that rise up in their back yards. Thankfully, firefighters contained the 173-square-mile blaze and my family is safe.

Both these events brought climate change impacts closer to home for me.

No wonder opinion research shows that firsthand experiences with extreme weather—and the experiences of close family and friends—make Americans far more likely to acknowledge that climate change is real, happening now, and is of great personal concern.

The bad news is that climate change is making for wildfires in the American West that are more severe and more difficult to fight. Some are calling the new climate-fueled wildfires “monster” or “mega” fires.

Climate change isn’t the only culprit creating the conditions for more severe and dangerous fires, but it doesn’t take a climate scientist or even a great detective to see the fingerprints of human-caused climate change on most wildfire crime scenes. Despite this, Media Matters analysis shows that the news media has largely failed to do the service of putting wildfires into the climate context for their audiences. This summer (as of July), only 6 percent of news stories about wildfires even mentioned climate change.

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Talking Points: Middle-Out Economics

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You may have noticed that President Obama recently started talking about middle-out economics—the idea that a thriving economy doesn’t start with the ultra-rich or with big corporations but, instead, with ensuring financial security for regular Americans.

But Obama didn’t coin the phrase middle-out economics. That honor goes to Seattle thinkers Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, authors of The Gardens of Democracy and The True Patriot, and co-founders of the True Patriot Network. Liu and Hanauer present compelling evidence that the real job creators in the American economy are ordinary working families. When wealth concentrates only at the very top, ordinary folks have less to spend, and businesses have fewer customers. But when more Americans have a chance to attain financial security, our economy gets stronger.

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