Forehead-slapping stuff: Over 700 science journalists take fossil-fueled trips to Qatar, then sit around trying to figure out why the world's population scoffs at the global warming hoax

Communicating Rationality to Irrational Beings (Or Why Climate Change Communication Is So Darn Hard) | OnEarth Magazine

...Bierce’s saying was invoked this week at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar, during a panel discussion on climate change, denialism, and communication. (Click here to watch a video of the session. [Note that almost every shot features at least one bottle of nice, refreshing bottled water.] The point was that we humans are pretty irrational beings (even if we think we’re not), which makes communicating science -- a highly rational process -- extremely difficult.
...Citing research by Yale University’s Dan Kahan, Vendantam said that polarization on the issue of climate change actually increases as members of the public become more scientifically literate -- a fact that flies in the face of reason. Kahan concludes that his research “shows that science journalists have one of the hardest jobs in the world.”

Needless to say, Vendantam won some points with his audience, a group of more than 700 science communicators from 80-plus countries.

We’ve been here in Doha discussing the most pressing challenges facing our profession and learning about some of the top-notch science taking place in this corner of the Arab world. At the top of the agenda: Communicating the threat of climate change and the ways that countries such as this one are trying to mitigate and adapt to it.
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Key questions for those of at the conference have been why there is still so much inaction on climate change -- by governments, by citizens, by everyone. Why are there still so many people who don’t accept the science of human-induced global warming in spite of the overwhelming evidence? What are we -- the people who are paid to translate the latest science for the general public -- doing wrong?

The answer, given emerging research on how our brains work, may be to appeal to emotion, to speak the language of feelings rather than facts. So the next time you get in an argument with someone over whether human-induced global warming is fact or fiction, or simply encounter someone who needs a wake-up call about the environment, remember that sometimes it's our hearts, not our brains, that actually do the thinking.