When Climate Communication Requires a Security Guard

In November of 2016, the far right website Breitbart.com published an article claiming that the earth was in fact cooling, not warming and used a video created by weather.com about La Nina to support their argument.

In an unprecedented move, weather.com crafted a rebuttal in both text and video form. This video has now been watched 10 million+ times but at the cost of online attacks and even personal threats.

Over the last year weather.com has produced several videos a week communicating both climate and environmental issues along with our daily forecasts. Thanks to millions of users a day on weather.com and through The Weather Channel app, we have seen what language and messages resonate and how we can more effectively communicate our message without alienating the listener.

In this presentation we will explore the type of negative feedback climate communicators face, the language that receives more positive feedback and what researchers can do to better explain their studies to the general public.