Sea ice meets land as seen from NASA's Operation IceBridge research aircraft along the Upper Baffin Bay coast on March 27, 2017 above Greenland. Greenland's ice sheet is retreating due to warming temperatures.

WASHINGTON — Some Republicans, including elected officials who say they are seeing the real-life effects of climate change in the areas they represent, are pushing their party to re-think the way they handle the issue. And that starts with changing how they talk about it.

While some of those Republicans say the party’s full acceptance of the science is still far off, the only way to get there will be to speak the language of conservatives.

“You can’t lead off with ‘climate change’ with most Republicans,” Debbie Dooley, president of Conservatives for Energy Freedom and of the Green Tea Coalition, a collection of clean energy advocates that includes tea partiers, like Dooley, told BuzzFeed News. “The message you use is freedom, market, national security, fiscally responsible. … Republicans are absolutely receptive to that.”

“If you mention ‘climate change’ to a Republican they’re not going to hear another thing you said.”

Part of the issue is credibility, Rep. Ryan Costello said. The Pennsylvania Republican, who is a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, said that fellow Republicans who are outspoken on environmental issues are in the best position to convince their colleagues.

“Oftentimes, it’s the credibility of the messenger,” Costello said, arguing that both Republican members and conservative media have a major role to play in addressing the issue. “You have to look at what that person’s other policy positions are in order to establish credibility on the issue.”

He added that some environmentalists are very “aggressive” in their advocacy, which may not resonate well with Republicans. “I think it’s the sort of issue that the more you try and press and put it on somebody’s front burner, the more tuned out they may get,” Costello said.

Costello is one of 17 House Republicans who recently signed on to a resolution to work “constructively… to study and address the causes and effects of measured changes to our global and regional climates.” The resolution is more about messaging than action, but it represents the kind of change in tone that these Republicans think can get their party on board.

The framing of the issue is key, Republicans say, especially in conservative media, where taking on climate change isn’t exactly popular.

“It’s all a matter of changing, making it so this song starts playing on talk radio,” former Rep. Bob Inglis told BuzzFeed News. The South Carolina Republican, who lost his seat to a primary opponent who went after him on climate change, said that it’s a matter of making the issue be “recognized as a tune that’s hummable by conservatives.”

In many cases, though, the issue isn’t just recognizing the song, but hearing it to begin with, Jim Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, argued. “I think the answer really is we need to reach out to the conservative media and try to raise this issue,” Brainard told BuzzFeed News. “Make sure the readers and listeners start thinking about it.”

That’s why Brainard recently spoke on conservative radio about climate change — though he said he felt uncomfortable doing it. But Brainard said it was important to him to get those ideas out there, arguing that too often discussions about climate change occur in bubbles of like-minded people. “In some ways, the people who care about the environment are talking to themselves,” he said.