Teaching Climate Change Communication, From the Classroom to a Conference of Journalists

Michael Mann and Kathleen Hall Jamieson co-taught the course "Climate Change and Communication" to undergraduate and graduate students in the spring.

When climate scientist Michael Mann was in talks to join the University of Pennsylvania faculty, he met with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), to ask if she would be interested in working with him if he came to Penn. Jamieson enthusiastically said she would.

In Spring 2024, they taught a course, “Climate Change and Communication," tied to the 2024 Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, which brought hundreds of journalists who study and produce environmental communication to campus. This gave students the opportunity to interview journalists from outlets such as Inside Climate News, The Guardian, Vox, Mother Jones, and Mongabay.

On the first night of the conference, Jamieson, Mann, now the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), and Rick Weiss, director of SciLine, sat onstage at Penn's Zellerback Theatre, discussing student work from the course.

Undergraduate and graduate students identified six mis-conceptions and six conspiracy theories, respectively, about climate change and worked to pinpoint scientific sources that would undermine the premises of these problematic notions.

Audience members laughed as Jamieson directed to a QR code on the screen behind her to access climate communication resources from APPC and PCSSM, as “scan the QR code” had already become the refrain of the paperless conference.

Combating Misinformation and Disinformation

“The problem isn’t so much a deficit of information, it’s a surplus of misinformation,” said Mann at a lunchtime session on the first day of the SEJ conference. With climate change denial on the wane, “because we can all see it’s happening,” Mann said bad actors are using other tactics: doomism, division, deflection, and delaying action.

The topic of this session — “The Intersection Between Disinformation Research and Climate Science” — was also addressed in the "Climate Change and Communication" course. The class’s 24 undergraduates split into groups to research climate misconceptions. At the same time, the seven graduate students focused on conspiracy theories, all for collaborative white papers on “Leading Fallacies and Misframings in Climate Discourse.” The week before the conference, one representative for each topic presented for five minutes before Jamieson and Mann gave one minute of feedback in class followed by written comments.

The undergrads focused on six myths: individuals cannot make a meaningful difference; it’s too late to act; climate science knowledge is unreliable; solar and wind power are unacceptably costly and unreliable; climate change solutions cause problems for other parts of the ecosystem; and climate change is beneficial. The “it’s too late to act” fallacy is known as doomism, a notion that Mann has worked to counteract by promoting “urgency and agency.”

Third-year student Elizabeth Collins presented her group’s paper refuting that climate change solutions such as wind farms, solar panels, and electric vehicles cause problems for other parts of the ecosystem. She noted that the National Ocean Industries Association and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found no credible link between offshore wind activities and whale mortalities, and she concluded with the benefits of offshore wind.

Collins, a communication major from Phoenix, Arizona, said she was motivated to take this course after taking "Introduction to Political Communication" with Jamieson in the fall and felt inspired by her vast knowledge.

The course had several guest speakers, like climate journalist Wolfgang Blau, Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb, Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein, and Philadelphia Inquirer national opinion columnist Will Bunch. Collins says the guest lectures showed her that it’s important to take climate change awareness and solutions into everyday careers, not only in scientific fields, because that’s how change will happen.

Students were tasked with developing concise questions for each guest grounded in assigned readings and based on the guest’s unique expertise. The class also included writing a letter to the editor, an op-ed, and practicing fact-checking.

“We’re asking a lot of them, but I feel like they’re rising to the occasion,” Mann said on the day of the white paper presentations.

“The good is that it’s a unique opportunity. The bad is that it’s a unique opportunity. We can’t teach the same course a year from now. ” – Michael Mann

Why Climate Language Matters

Annabelle Horton, a first-year doctoral student in earth and environmental science who is one of Mann’s Ph.D. students, said the class was challenging but well worth the work.

“It’s been one of the most impactful classes I’ve taken as a science student, and I feel like I will use so much of what I’ve learned in my career, in the sense that it will definitely tweak how I write things,” said Horton, who is from Philadelphia. Her work in the Mann Research Group involves researching changes in the frequency and intensity of winter storms.

Horton said her biggest takeaways from the class were that “language matters so much more than we think” and that “there is such a disparity between the language I’ve been using to describe science and the language that is accessible for the public.”

Horton said the class talked about using “pollutants” or “methane gases” instead of “greenhouse gases” because the latter may lead people to think of the positive connotation of plants growing. She also noted that calling someone a “climate change denier” could make them defensive, which doesn’t help persuade.

Similarly, second-year Master of Environmental Studies student Mike Muldoon noted that “the term ‘conspiracy’ itself is something we use as a tool in the classroom,” but it’s better to use different language when communicating about these beliefs externally. Muldoon, who is from Exton, Pennsylvania, said he has been struck by “the care with which both professors approach the topic of handling misinformation and the respect they pay to people who may have been misinformed.” He said the class also taught him about inoculation, explaining why misinformation is false to someone before it reaches them.

He says climate communication is a big part of his work as a speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Muldoon attended the SEJ conference as a Climate Change and Communication class student, which included going to a training from SciLine on talking to the media, and as an EPA employee. He also watched the keynote speech by EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

“I always find unexpected things happening when I’m team-teaching, and they’re inevitably good,” said Jamieson.

At the conference, graduate students walked around with a badge below their name tags that read, “Ask me about debunking climate conspiracy theories.” The group flagged down a Wyoming journalist to ask about misconceptions he deals with, whether he tries to refrain from language that might polarize readers, and what types of stories his audience likes best.

In class the week after the conference, undergraduate and graduate students shared what they learned from their journalist interviews: Balancing reality and urgency with local stories that inspire action is important. It’s important to meet people where they are.

There isn’t one single policy that would solve climate change, but there’s a compounding effect.

Students then incorporated information from journalists into their white paper contributions and filmed a video explainer of their insights, with help from the Annenberg Media Lab.

“They’re actually producing communication in the context of theory about communication,” Jamieson said. “Teach the course from a climate science perspective without a focus on communication theory, and the students’ white papers and videos might not be as persuasive as they could be."