Featured image: How you deliver climate messaging matters, in terms of changing minds, researchers are finding. Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty

Telling people that scientists almost unanimously agree that human-caused climate change is happening can help to nudge their thinking in that direction. A study published last month in Nature Human Behaviour, tested this ‘consensus message’ across 27 countries and found that the people least familiar with the message or who were sceptical of climate science were the most likely to change their perspective when presented with it.

Climate-communication researchers who spoke to Nature’s news team say that the findings add to a growing body of social-science research identifying the best strategies to help people come to grips with the concept that climate change is real — but that consensus messaging doesn’t always translate to a lasting shift in perspective.

For an enduring shift, they suggest, the message needs to be personally relevant. That’s because “climate change is affecting the people and places and things that we love right now”, says Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, Connecticut.