Most people have a hard time digesting highly technical information because they simply don’t speak the language of the scientists delivering the content. And that’s why the scientists behind the 1,600-page National Climate Assessment took a simple step to help people understand and share the information about a complex issue.
Presentations that provide the big picture before details are easier to understand.
The federal report came out on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when Americans were shopping or enjoying a day off from work—they most certainly weren’t interested in studying graphs of temperature changes. Over the next few days, however, you’ll read more details about the report as journalists and bloggers dig deeper into its 29 chapters that span regions from Hawaii to the Northeast and cover topics from water and forests to oceans and cities.
But if you’ve been scanning the news, you’ve probably already heard the key message. The main message climate scientists want you to know is this:
There is clear and compelling evidence that global average temperatures are much higher and rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced. This warming trend can only be explained by human activities, especially the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
In one paragraph, you get the big picture. That’s how climate scientists structured it. The report was written “with a view to presenting technical information in a manner more accessible to a broad audience.” Each chapter is subdivided into “key messages.” For example, chapter two runs 12,000-words, which is hard to get through in one sitting. To make it easier to digest, the the chapter is subdivided by four easy-to-read key messages. They are:
Key message 1: Global climate is changing rapidly and the evidence consistently points to human activities.
Key message 2: Earth’s climate will continue to change over this century and beyond.
Key message 3: The world’s oceans have absorbed 93% of the excess heat from human-induced warming which makes the oceans warmer and more acidic.
Key message 4: Global average sea level has risen by about 7-8 inches since 1900, with almost half this rise occurring since 1993 as oceans have warmed and land-based ice has melted. The level is very likely to rise 1 to 4 feet by the end of the century.
The federal climate change report is being presented to the public in a way that’s easy to read and to share because it follows a communication strategy that neuroscientist John Medina calls “Meaning before details.” In other words, what is the ‘gist’ of it?
According to Medina in his book, Brain Rules, “The brain pays more attention to the gist than to the peripheral details. If we don’t know the gist—the meaning—of information, we are unlikely to pay attention to its details.”
The simple way to give a reader or listener the gist of a presentation is to structure it in an organized, hierarchical structure. For example, you wouldn’t say: umbrella, raincoats and boots. You would say, “It’s raining. Take your umbrella, raincoat and boots.” Words that are presented randomly are hard to understand without a top-line sentence that provides meaning—the bigger picture. “If you want people to be able to pay attention, don’t start with the details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions,” writes Medina.
The science of climate change is complicated, but the big picture isn’t. As scientists continue to study effective ways of communicating complexity, look for these approaches when they release their findings.