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Hello. This is minutes English from BBC Learning English.
I'm Sam and I'm Rob. When Sarah Ott was growing up in Florida in the 1990s, she loved playing in nature.
She picked up litter in the street and took it home to a recycle.
But later in college, sarah became surrounded by people in her community who didn't share her love of the environment, people who didn't believe that climate change was real, and slowly I started to doubt it as well.
Climate denies. People who don't believe that climate change is happening or that it isn't caused by humans make up around 9% of the American population, according to some estimates.
Now, sarah works as a climate campaigner at the US National Center for Science Education, teaching children the science behind climate change.
But her journey there was a difficult one, and she lost many friends on the way.
In this program, will be discussing climate deniers and finding out how to talk with people who doubt the science of global warming.
And, as usual, will be learning some new vocabulary as well.
But before that, I have a question for you.
Whatever climate denies think, there is strong agreement on the issue among scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ip C-C.
So what percentage of the worlds scientific community agree that climate change is real?
Is it A 79 %? B 89% or C 99 %?
Oh, I'll have a guess, and I'll say it's 99 %.
OK, I will reveal the answer later in the programme.
Marco Silver is a climate disinformation reporter for the BBC.
He told BBC World Service Program the climate question, what he's learned about reporting on the issue from around the world, it is quite important to make here a very clear distinction between being wrong, ill informed about climate change and being a full blown climate denier.
A lot of people may not be very well versed with the science The facts of climate change, to be honest, they can at times be quite complex, quite dense.
Some people may have genuine questions about the subject.
So with information, with facts, those people can be convinced climate denies, though people who reject the basic facts of climate change are likely to be more difficult to persuade.
Marco distinguishes a full blown climate denial someone who is completely committed to the idea, from someone who is simply ill informed, meaning someone who knows less than they should about a particular topic.
Marco thinks it's possible to persuade an ill informed person that climate change is a fact, e.g.
by sharing personal stories of how the weather has changed in recent years, or by asking them why they doubt the scientific evidence.
Full blown climate deniers, on the other hand, are much harder to persuade.
Here's Marco Silver again sharing some advice on how best to talk to people about the climate with BBC World Service Program.
The climate question. A number of researchers in academics have looked into exactly this topic before.
Professor Sandy van Delineen, professor of Social Psychology at University of Cambridge, is one of them.
He's been looking into this long and hard, and when I spoke to him, he gave me a couple of tips.
For instance, don't challenge a climate denier directly.
Don't confront them, telling them that they are this or that, throwing insults at them, that their beliefs are wrong.
That sort of attitude or strategy is only likely to backfire.
If you do that, the chances are people are is going to hold on to their views even more firmly.
Marker mentions Professor Van de Linden, a psychologist who has taken a long, hard look at the issue of climate denial, ully in order to improve it for the future, professor vander Lindon advises us not to challenge climate denies directly, and never to throw insults, to say offensive, hurtful things directly to someone.
This approach is unlikely to work, and will probably back fire or have the opposite effect from that intended, such as making that person's opinion even stronger.
Instead, what's needed is understanding and empathy, realizing that climate denies cannot control the life events that led them to mistrust
science, and the patients to try to show them the difference between fact and fiction.
OK, it's time to reveal the answer to your question.
Now, sam, what percentage
of the global scientific community agree that human cause climate change is real?
And I guessed it was 99 %.
And that was the correct answer.
Rather, ha, ha. The scientific evidence for a climate emergency is overwhelming, leaving just the question of what we do about it.
OK, let's recapt the vocabulary we've learned from this program on climate deniers, people who do not accept that climate change is real, someone who is ill informed knows less than they should about a particular topic.
The adjective full blown means completely committed or developed.
The idiom to take a long, hard look at something means to examine something very carefully in order to improve it for the future.
If you throw insults, you say offensive, hurtful things directly to someone, and finally, if your actions backfire, they have the opposite effect from the one you intended.
Once again, our 6 min are up.
Bye for now. Bye, bye. 6 min English from the BBC.
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