Improving the Understanding of Climate Change Factors with Images

Abstract

In Australia, the public got its first mass marketing about climate change and the measures that would be required to avoid it, by TV images of black balloons and Professor Tim Flannery turning off light switches. Journalistic coverage has been similarly dominated by household electricity. More technical literature is generally dominated by the concept of “carbon dioxide equivalence” (CO2eq) as spelled out in the Kyoto protocol. This concept isn't used in climate models because it makes no physical sense. The use of CO2eq and the focus on household electricity has lead to a profound mismatch between the causal factors as understood by climate scientists and causal factors as perceived by the public. “The public” here isn't just the general public, but people of many backgrounds with a strong interest in climate change but without the deep knowledge of professional climate scientists. We need images consistent with climate models, which accurately rank the causes of climate change and guide proposed actions. Such images point to meat as a key focal issue.