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This paper investigates the use of science in British newspapers’ narratives of climate change between 1988 and 2016. It is based on the analysis of eight newspapers and their Sunday and online versions (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Sun, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent). We used the keywords “climate / climatic change”, “warm / warming” and “greenhouse / greenhouse effect” to retrieve the articles from the Nexis / Lexis database. To identify the articles with a specific focus on climate change, we included only those containing the keywords in the headline (9789 items). Framing theory helps interpret the process of construction of the “threat” through science by showing a tendency towards scientific consensus for the centre / left-leaning newspapers, and an instrumental use of consensus for the centre-right. These findings are useful for both scientists and policymakers interested in understanding how climate narratives can promote delay in action on climate change.

The UN summit on climate change in Durban constituted an important moment in the continuous discourse on how to understand climate change and the framing of the problems and solutions. A new emergent frame of understanding could be detected in the press, which the author calls the ‘out-dated worldview’ frame. This frame contains a critique of the clear-cut division between developing vs. developed countries from the 1992 Rio Convention, and may influence how we understand burden-sharing roles in a new global climate deal. In an eager attempt to include all major polluters within a new climate regime, there is a danger that the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ will be ignored, which may be an attempt to excuse the rich industrialized countries from their responsibility after 150 years of benefitting from fossil-fuel-driven development.