Debate is critical to bring awareness of conceptual solutions and the risks of climate change.

The Future of Public Understanding and Its Relation to Action The trajectory of public understanding frustrates many climate scientists and educators who see climate risks growing, understand that delayed action will increase the risks further, and believe that concerted action is needed now to reduce them (e.g., Hansen, 2009). Many of these concerned individuals see climate literacy and continuing efforts by scientists to explain what they know as the way to accomplish the objectives of improved public understanding, increased public concern about climate change, and increased public support and action to reduce climate risks. However, unless existing behavioral science evidence collected in different domains of application is brought to bear on climate literacy and education, there is no reason to believe that future efforts will be any more successful in improving public understanding or willingness to take action related to climate change than past efforts have been. Conventional educational and informational programs are unlikely to have a major effect on aggregate public opinion, and more effective strategies need to be devised to improve public understanding and to increase individual and collective action. As political ideology plays a large role in people's beliefs about climate change and their policy support, problems with public understanding are not mainly due to a knowledge deficit but often result from a deficit in trust in the conveyors of climate models and data ( Malka & Krosnick, 2009).¶ Improving Public Understanding¶ Public understanding of climate change needs improvement, but the problem is not one of “illiteracy.” In comparison to the rest of the world, the American public has an average amount of knowledge about climate change and an average understanding of climate change phenomena ( Brechin, 2003). U.S. adults who doubt that climate change is happening, is anthropogenic, or presents serious risks should be assumed not to have a deficit of knowledge but rather to have different understandings. Individuals holding mental models that conflict with the available scientific evidence are not a blank slate, as the metaphor of illiteracy suggests, so the needed educational process is not one of adding to knowledge but one of inducing conceptual change. Research on science education indicates that preconceptions that conflict with scientific understanding can be tenacious and that instruction that does not address them typically fails to help learners adopt mental models that are scientifically accurate ( National Research Council, 2005). A developing literature, focused mainly on teaching fundamental scientific concepts to children, identifies common preconceptions in some areas of science and studies “learning progressions” that can lead learners effectively from their preconceptions to mental models that are consistent with scientific understanding ( National Research Council, 2007). Changing adults' misconceptions about climate change will likely prove more difficult than teaching children, but the general principle of beginning with learners' preexisting mental models surely applies ( Bostrom et al., 1994; Kempton, 1991). What can scientists and educators do to improve U.S. public understanding? We begin by stating a position in favor of “nonpersuasive communication” ( Fischhoff, 2007). Much of value can be gained by efforts to inform the public in ways that are not disguised efforts to engage support for a line of public policy. Thus, it is important for scientists to continue to explain what is and is not known about climate change to journalists, policymakers, and the general public, using normal science education approaches, and to explain the difference between reducible versus irreducible uncertainty. Such efforts will be valuable to people whose understandings already approximate those of scientists, whose understandings are relatively unformed, or who become more open to input from scientists in the future. It is also important to continue to correct errors and mischaracterizations of the science of climate change, which continue to be publicized despite repeated corrections. These efforts are necessary, though unlikely to be sufficient, to raise the level of public understanding in the current politicized environment.¶ Other approaches are needed in addition. One is to explain a simple conceptual frame for understanding climate change that is more congruent with the state of knowledge than the persuasive frames on offer now—a frame that does not claim too much for the ability to make climate predictions or exaggerate the import of existing scientific uncertainties. 7 Recent scientific reports are beginning to define such a frame—one that emphasizes risk or uncertainty management ( Gober, Kirkwood, Balling, Ellis, & Deitrick, 2009; National Research Council, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2011; Pollack, 2007). In this frame, climate change is shown to alter the profile of risks from the many events associated with climate, typically increasing such risks, including catastrophic ones. Responses to climate change are presented as options for risk management, not as self-evident responses to a predictable future.¶ The risk management frame is readily understandable. Everyone faces catastrophic risks (from life-threatening diseases, automobile accidents, house fires, and even climate-related events), and everyone understands strategies for managing them. One strategy is to reduce activities that might lead to catastrophe (e.g., controlling our diets, staying off icy roads, or for climate change, adopting energy-efficient and low-emissions technology). Another is to lower the cost of catastrophic events if they occur (e.g., installing air bags and fire extinguishers, buying health and fire insurance, or, with climate change, protecting vital infrastructure and improving early warning and emergency response capabilities). Yet another strategy is to invest in a better understanding of the risk profile and of the likely costs and benefits of the risk management options. People manage risks by employing combinations of these strategies or by employing none of them and taking their chances.