A new study out of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication investigated the differences in how Americans perceive the phrases “carbon pollution,” “carbon emissions” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”
Colloquially, these three phrases are often used interchangeably regarding climate change. The research, published in Environmental Communication, showed that “carbon emissions” and “carbon pollution” ranked similarly in terms of how they were perceived to impact human health, the environment and air quality. But the phrase “greenhouse gas emissions” was consistently perceived as less of a threat than the other two.
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“It’s essential to understand what people think about these words, concepts, ideas — in order to best shape our efforts to educate, inform and motivate the public,” said Dr. Matthew Goldberg, associate research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and co-author of the paper.
The research team at Yale used a mixed methods survey to collect data from 2,859 participants. They recorded demographic data such as political background, gender and age. They asked each participant a series of open-ended and closed questions to determine how they perceived each term. This approach allowed the researchers to get at the specific thoughts that each term triggered for participants, while also capturing the spontaneous “top-of-mind” associations. This mixed-methods approach created a nuanced portrait of each phrase.
“Reality is complicated,” Goldberg said. “And we try to reflect it as best we can.”
The study intended to represent specifically how Americans respond to these terms.
“You want to have your research be as relevant as possible to the largest audience as possible,” Goldberg said. “But that also makes it difficult to understand sub-audiences more deeply.”
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Still, the researchers had an opportunity to see some of the ways that things like political views impacted reception of each term. The differentiation between terms was fairly consistent across people who identified as either Republican or Democrat. Both parties saw “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” as more potent words than “greenhouse gas emissions.”
While the terms “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” appear to carry more weight in conveying the threat to human health, in some circumstances, “greenhouse gas emissions” is the more appropriate phrase. It’s the only term of the three that encompasses other emissions that lead to climate change, such as methane.
These insights can inform climate change communication, Goldberg said, as long as they aren’t taken within a vacuum. Larger context, the messenger and other factors also play a significant role.
“It’s just one important piece to a larger set of communication factors,” Goldberg said.
This research underscores the importance of language and wording when communicating a message.
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“This phenomenon is called framing,” said Dr. K.C. Busch, assistant professor of STEM education at North Carolina State University. “It’s this concept of framing, which is that language matters. And language is not accidental. And that even though different words might refer to the same phenomena, we react differently to different words, because it elicits a different schema in our head as to what this issue is about, or who’s responsible.”
Busch has also conducted research examining how wording impacts climate change communication. In one project, she took a real school textbook and slightly altered the text. The original version conveyed high uncertainty about climate change and its causes, and the new text conveyed more certainty. For example, “not all scientists agree about the causes of global warming” became “97% of scientists agree about the causes of global warming.”
She found that middle school and high school students who read the different texts were affected by the implications from the wording differences, regardless of their prior knowledge or understanding of climate change. Many of the students, she found, took the credibility of the textbooks as a given, even though the altered text was more functionally correct than the original.
“I think my greater concern, especially with adults, is that they’re no longer subjected to school textbooks,” said Busch. “They’re subjected to the landscape of climate change rhetoric out there, which is even worse.”
As there is a never-ending stream of information out there on the internet, the best approach, said Busch, is to make sure people are equipped with the ability to discern both credible sources and the nuance of language.
“I don’t think it’s disingenuous or manipulative to be conscious of the language that you’re using with different audiences,” Busch said. “I just think it’s good communication. As long as it’s still truthful and honest information, I think word choice is just an act of being a good communicator.”
