Excessive exaggeration in climate communications is leading to “a situation where no one listens anymore. Without trust, we are lost.” Hyperbolic and unrealistic scenarios lead to the impossibility of reaching workable solutions. Coupled with the salesman’s technique of a false sense of urgency, we create unnecessary stress – which leads the target to give up and tune out. Under urgent pressure, we make bad decisions with even worse outcomes. That’s a summary of comments from the late Dr. Hans Rosling, in his book Factfulness.

Media, notably spearheaded by The Guardian and the George Mason School of Journalism, have applied specific methods of propaganda messaging to create a campaign of carpet-bombing us with the invented terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis”.