ABSTRACT
Climate change is a pressing environmental problem, but it is also a socio-political issue. As such, scientific and public (mediatized) communications frequently engage in local, national and global climate change explanations, narratives, and representations. Frequent disagreements over climate change (concerning perception, communication or policy) have made analysing rhetoric increasingly significant in climate change communication research. The present study focuses on how experts demonstrate consensus or express uncertainty; how scientists verify and climate sceptics question the evidence; how we persuade each other and create doubt. The current work also aims to provide an overview of the linguistic practices and rhetorical strategies employed in offline and online communications to transmit climate change science to the public. The topic is contextualized by addressing the links between research on climate change discourses, narratives and rhetoric. The second part focuses on scientific (climate change consensus) and climate sceptic debates to show the workings of scientific rhetoric. The third part of the chapter contrasts climate talks in the news and on social media. Rhetoric, which includes visual rhetoric, is an important tool for communicating engagement and action in climate change debates and beyond; however, the most effective or ineffective means of communication are still under debate. As a concluding remark, we may see the merits, opportunities, and difficulties present in the field; however, communication alone cannot provide a universal cure for managing, let alone solving, climate change.
