“It really does hammer home the message that it’s not some science-y issue, it affects you and animals,” says Chris Rapley of the BBC’s new climate change documentary: Climate Change – The facts.
The former director of the Science Museum in London served as science adviser to the show, which he believes is incredibly timely after last year’s extreme weather and a drumbeat of striking climate science.
“2018 has seen a big shift. The planet sending us really, really powerful strident messages, you could hardly watch evening news without seeing wildlifes, or storms, or floods. It’s gone from a taboo subject to being semi-normalised in the news.”Chris Rapley, scientific adviser on the BBC’s new climate change documentary, talks rising temperatures, hammering home the message, and David Attenborough
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On the science side he cites the UN climate science panel’s report on , as well as the increasing speed of work to attribute events such as last summer’s heatwave to climate change.
Such attribution has helped to turn the issue from an abstract one into a concrete one, and therefore could shift public attitudes, he believes.
“The story is penetrating consciousness and we are probably at some sort of a tipping point [in the public],” says Rapley.
He advised the BBC on which experts to talk to for the documentary, “caught a few things” on the science, and tried to strike the right tone between fear and hope.
“It tries to avoid the danger of over-delivering on the doom and gloom, and leaving people helpless and without any sense of agency,” he says. But it is still “pretty uncompromising” about the threat from climate change, he adds.
Steering the right path on spelling out what needs to be done to slow climate change, and avoiding telling people what to do, was difficult, he says. Rapley had his fingers burned before in his previous role, when the Science Museum ran a climate exhibition called Prove It, which critics felt had overstepped the line between informing people and advocacy.
“People certainly don’t want to be told what to do. That’s an absolute no-no,” says Rapley. In the BBC documentary, such actions are outlined in an aspirational way to avoid finger-wagging.
Asked why the show’s presenter, David Attenborough, has become such a champion of climate change action recently, Rapley says: “I think he’s realised that he’s hugely influential. I think he’s realised he can make a difference.”
Rapley takes comfort that climate sceptics have been reduced to a “very small number.”
But he worries about the wider rise of fake news and anti-scientific views, such as flat earthers and anti-vaxxers.
“There’s a more general pushback against expertise and knowledge and understanding. In a way that’s almost more worrying because it’s much more difficult to deal with.”
