knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture climate change.pdf

Public Understand. (2000) 297–312. Printed in the UK PII: S0963-6625(00)13979-7Knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: climatechange versus the ozone holeSheldon UngarThis paper begins with the “knowledge–ignorance paradox”—the process by which the growth ofspecialized knowledge results in a simultaneous increase in ignorance. It then outlines the rolesof personal and social motivations, institutional decisions, the public culture, and technology inestablishing consensual guidelines for ignorance. The upshot is a sociological model of how the“knowledgesociety” militates against the acquisition of scienti?c knowledge. Giventhe assumptionof widespread scienti?c illiteracy, the paper tries to show why the ozone hole was capable ofengendering some public understanding and concern, while climate change failed to do so. Theozone threat encouraged the acquisition of knowledge because it was allied and resonated witheasy-to-understand bridging metaphors derived from the popular culture. It also engendered a“hot crisis.” That is, it provided a sense of immediate and concrete risk with everyday change fails at both of these criteria and remains in a public . IntroductionHaving done research on climate change since 1988, I routinely bring it up in conversationspertaining to “strange weather.” Such events seem to have e monplace, andwhenever I suggest that the climate might be changing, others who know of my researchinterests almost invariable ask the same question: “Is global warming real?”1I hedge inanswering, allowing that the vast majority of physical scientists in the area believe it is. Myinterlocutors usually have little of substance to add. And I am forced to admit that after adecade of clipping articles fromScienceandNature,my sense that climate change is realultimately boils down to picking the experts you think you can only is it a daunting task for members of the public to go beyond simple recognitionof the issue and g