ClimateBites
a climate communication toolkit
Make Your Climate Message Stick 
ClimateBites offers metaphors, soundbites, quotes, humor, cartoons, stories and graphics for everybody who talks about climate change and wants their message to stick.
Nobody lampoons the media’s misleading — and cowardly — “he-said, she-said” climate debates better than John Oliver (5-11-14, Last Week Tonight). In this hilarious clip, Oliver lampoons media “false balance,” which leaves the false impression that experts are still divided.
Ten years after Boykoff brothers brilliant expose, “Balance as Bias,” so-called “balanced” debates continue to mislead the public.
With his eyes finally focused posterity, Pres. Obama hit a home run in his climate speech today at Georgetown U. (Will prompt action follow? Stay tuned. . . ) In addition to the substance, the speech included some real zingers.
Below are some of his best soundbites, followed by the full transcript of the speech.
“I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm…”
“Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world?”
What a great example of how to breath life into an abstract topic—renewable energy—by turning it into a human character. Add bits of emotional drama, surprise and slightly-risque humor. . . and the story becomes irresistible!
This award-winning ad by the power company Epuron and the German Ministry for the Environment (BMU) went viral a few years ago, and has taken on a life of its own, recently reaching 4+ million hits on YouTube. A good story always draws a crowd.
This ad was shown at the Climate Reality leadership training in SF last August to illustrate effective communication.
Weathergirl loses it. OMG!
Another excellent clip from “How to talk to an Ostrich, a series of short takes by PBS’s Earth the Operators’ Manual.
Last week at the Climate Reality Leadership Training in San Francisco, storytelling guru Andy Goodman led a spellbinding session on the importance of “changing the story.” Goodman described research that confirmed what many of us have experienced: in a public debate, a misleading but vivid anecdote can trump reams of data and logic. (Anybody remember Ronald Reagan’s wildly exaggerated “Welfare Queen” imagery?)
So often, the only way to dislodge emotionally-charged disinformation is to tell a better, more compelling story.
To see this principle in action, check out this wonderful little clip from Goodman’s Free Range Thinking newsletter about a successful campaign in Troy MI that defeated the Tea Party and saved the city library. Lots of lessons here! Continue reading
The defensive walls of the ‘Denial Citadel’ were breached on Saturday by Richard Muller’s announcement that he is no longer sceptical about climate science.
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified Continue reading
The pride of lions closes in for the kill, stalking its prey, waiting to spot a weak buffalo.
African lions on the hunt prowl the edge of a herd, single out one buffalo, then hunt as a pack to separate the individual from the herd and bring it down. In The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Michael E. Mann notes that critics of climate science often use the same tactic, which he dubs ‘The Serengeti Strategy.’ Continue reading
Here’s veteran TV meteorologist Paul Douglas (“A Message from a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change):
“I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. Continue reading
Like half the planet, I love Angry Birds. Apart from the intricate challenges of figuring out trajectories and new strategies, the game taps into a brutal and primal delight in the fierce battle for survival. Continue reading