»CO2 causes a hole in the atmosphere« Using laypeople’s conceptions as a starting point to communicate climate change

Publikation: Beiträge in SammelwerkenAufsätze in SammelwerkenForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Translating public concern for global warming into effective action requires knowledge about the causes and risks of climate change. The aim of this study is a theory-guided analysis of everyday and scientific conceptions of global warming. These conceptions will be the basis for the design of communicating strategies in a separate study.

Framed by the model of educational reconstruction, scientific concepts of global warming were compared with everyday conceptions that were identified in interviews and a re-analysis of empirical studies. The analysis of conceptions of climate change based on the theory of experientialism (Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To Western Thought, 1999) shows that laypeople and scientists refer to the same schemata: the use of the container-flow schema is omnipresent in conceptions on the global carbon cycle as well as in conceptions of the radiative equilibrium between earth and space. To explain the causes of global warming three principles were found: global warming by (a) an imbalance in the global carbon cycle, (b) man-made carbon dioxide, and (c) natural vs. man-made carbon dioxide. Laypeople explain the processes leading to global warming either through warming by more input or warming by less output.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
TitelThe Economic, Social and Political Elements of Climate Change
HerausgeberWalter Leal Filho
Anzahl der Seiten20
ErscheinungsortBerlin, Heidelberg
VerlagSpringer
Erscheinungsdatum2011
Seiten603-622
ISBN (Print)978-3-642-14775-3
ISBN (elektronisch)978-3-642-14776-0
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 2011

DOI