The tipping point trend in climate change communication

• Published in: Global environmental change Vol. 19; no. 3; pp. 336 - 344
• Main Authors: Russill, Chris, Nyssa, Zoe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2009
• Subjects: Alarmism; Carbon monoxide; Climate change; Climate change communication; Communication; Dangerous anthropogenic interference; Discourse; Emergence; Global warming; Media; Metaphor; Metaphors; News; News media; Presses; Scientific research; Threshold; Tipping point; Trends; United Kingdom; British Isles; Dangerous anthropogenic interference; News media; Climate change communication; Tipping point; Metaphor; Alarmism; Threshold
• ISSN: 0959-3780; 1872-9495
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.04.001

This article documents the use of tipping points in climate change discourse to discuss their significance. We review the relevant literature, and discuss the popular emergence of tipping points before their adoption in climate change discourse. We describe the tipping point trend in mainstream US and UK print news media and in the primary scientific literature on climate change by replicating the methodologies of Oreskes [Oreskes, N., 2004. The scientific consensus on climate change. Nature 306, 1686] and Boykoff and Boykoff [Boykoff, M.T., Boykoff, J.M., 2004. Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental Change 14, 125–136]. We then discuss the significance of climate change tipping points and their popular use in terms of generative metaphor.