Imagining a nebulous 'thing'

Climate change for most people is a nebulous thing.

One bomb caused this massive devastation
at Hiroshima - climate change is releasing
the equivalent amount of energy every day.

It cannot be touched, felt, smelt or seen, except for when we are visited by an extreme weather event, and rarely is that ever attributed directly to climate change, rather just a “nasty turn in the weather”.

A senior lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University, David Holmes, set out to conclude how we imagine climate change.

His finding, or at least a report on his work, appears today on The Conservation in a story headed: “Four Hiroshima bombs a second: how we image climate change”.

The headline was for impact and to harness a reader’s attention.

Holmes certainly achieved his aim, but then a story on Climate Progress headed: “16 of your favourite things that climate change is totally screwing up”, reduced the conversation to more day-to-day matters.

The demise of those “favourite things” are what will really make people take notice.