The man walking up the stairs ahead of me was wearing Ugg boots.

This was a building full of young startups having breakout sessions in sky blue communal space. It was my first day at Carbon Brief and I wasn’t quite expecting this. Maybe, like Google, we would have a slide.

There was no slide. But there was coffee, and biscuits, and a crash-course in understanding the climate debate. I dug into Boris Johnson’s weather-related musings and low-key lobbying by oil and gas companies. I helped conduct polling, interviewed scientific, economic and sociological researchers and, very importantly, investigated whether wind turbines make cows explode.

It’s been a brilliantly varied job. Thanks to the expertise of the people I work with, I’ve learned a lot. I feel like I’m beginning to be able to write about climate science. I am starting to learn what makes a good infographic. And I hope I might understand contracts for difference one day.

But for me, the climate debate boils down to stories. The way we understand the world to be colours our reaction to this gigantic process happening inexorably all around us. What we hear when scientists tell us this will depend on what our ears are already tuned to receive.

These stories play out in a somewhat black-and-white format in the (mostly Anglophone) media, and in a much more complex manner on a personal level. When someone is asked whether they think climate change is happening, they may well feel like they’re being asked to give a view on how economic policy should be formed, and say no. At the same time, they may still want the government to act to reduce emissions.

Understanding why this happens isn’t the same as gaining a better understanding of the climate system. Thanks to the work of scientists, we are at least 95 per cent sure that humans are causing the extra warming we’ve seen since industrialisation, and we have a good idea of how that is going to affect us. But we still have to muster enough momentum to do something about that, and that’s where – for me, anyway – understanding stories comes in.

And I think governments are getting that, too. The appetite for communications research with the potential to help depolarise the science and policy debates has grown and governments are looking for rhetorical methods that meet people on terrain they feel comfortable with, or encourage them to think about climate change in a different way.

In the US, for example, the government has stepped up its framing of climate change as a national security problem. It seems to make sense: the military is the country’s most trusted institution by miles. So why not leverage this trust?

High-ranking military figures are speaking out more frequently about the changes the US will experience as the world warms – whether it’s in response to extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina or planning for a much busier Arctic as sea ice melts. And defence gives the government the opportunity to bypass the US’s deadlocked legislature to create new climate policies.

The military will play an important role in the US ‘ Climate Action Plan‘, for example, helping regions prepare for the impacts of climate change. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is taking the initiative, too, with actions like increasing troop numbers in Alaska as Arctic ice loss morphs national and economic borders.

The more I have come back to this particular theme, the more it seems like a pretty fascinating lens through which to watch how the climate debate exists now and will change in the future. Drafting (sorry) the military into the climate debate naturally brings a great deal of baggage of its own.

It raises questions such as how the media deals with climate information – or encouragements to act on it – relayed by serving or retired military figures rather than politicians or scientists.

And, of course, while politicians seek to shape particular topics of national conversation, they are just as susceptible to the connotations of the different frames we use. Could greater military involvement in climate policy lead to a greater emphasis on adapting to new circumstances, rather than trying to cut emissions, for example?

Personally, I have no idea yet. But  it’s a topic I want to pursue. I’m leaving Carbon Brief to begin a PhD in communication at Columbia University, hoping to understand how these new developments in climate storytelling could change the way we understand and act on climate change.

Starting something new is always a bit daunting, especially as I’m leaving a job as rewarding as the one I’ve had at Carbon Brief. But after nearly three years of learning from very clever people, I feel like I’m in a good position to give it a go.