I saw this on the (American Geophysical Union) AGU blogosphere [http://blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2011/10/17/words-matter/] and decided it is so great that I would like to repost it here as well, as it encapsulates a lot of the communication difficulties between scientists and non-scientists.
From the article “Communicating the Science of Climate Change,” by Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Joy Hassol, from the October 2011 issue of Physics Today, page 48:
The full article is available here: http://climatecommunication.org/news/physics-today-article/