Here I often lament the ability of our society to understand complex issues such as that which arise out of modern science.

And my laments often have to do with the media and poor writing.

Well, for awhile now, in regards to climate change, there has been much hand wringing that the masses don’t understand it, that not enough is being done in mitigation (which I think is obvious and probably not at all dependent upon the former.)

So now we have this:

Climate summaries ‘for grownups,’ but not too difficult for policymakers

Offering a rare insider analysis of the climate assessment process, Carnegie’s Katharine Mach and colleagues at the Department of Global Ecology examined the writing and editing procedures by which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change creates summaries of their findings for policymakers. Despite recent critiques that these summaries are too difficult for non-experts, Mach and colleagues found them comparable to reference texts in terms of reading comprehension level. Their results are published by Science Advances.

“Using multiple tools for measuring reading ease, we found that IPCC reports are designed for grownups, but they are not harder to read than other science documents, including those written for the public by professional writers,” said co-author Chris Field, who served as the co-chair of the second IPCC Working Group.

Nevertheless, Mach and colleagues also suggest ways that the summary reports could be improved by using less jargon and more cohesive language to link the ideas they contain. The summaries could also be enhanced by graphics, videos, animations, and online multimedia, in addition to extensive media availability by panel leadership.

[…]

Perhaps it’s just my middle-20th-century-American-English bias, but I find the use of the word “grownup” instead of “adult” itself interesting.

Anyway, compare the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.

What the panel is saying is that there should be more pictures.