scholarly journals Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley ◽  
Dominik Stecula
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Cable News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Scant Attention

Americans polarized on climate change despite decreasing uncertainty in climate science. Explanations focused on organized climate skeptics and ideologically driven motivated reasoning are likely insufficient. Instead, Americans may have formed their attitudes by using party elite cues. We conduct analyses on over 8,000 print, broadcast, and cable news stories. We find that coverage became increasingly partisan as climate change rose in salience, but climate skeptics received scant attention. Democratic messages were more voluminous and consistently pro–climate science, while Republican messages have been scarcer and ambiguous until recently. This suggests Republican voters took cues from Democratic elites to reject climate science.

scholarly journals From journal to headline: the accuracy of climate science news in Danish high quality newspapers

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunver Lystbæk Vestergård
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science News ◽  
Preliminary Study

A significant number of mass media news stories on climate change quote scientific publications. However, the journalistic process of popularizing scientific research regarding climate change has been profoundly criticized for being manipulative and inaccurate. This preliminary study used content analysis to examine the accuracy of Danish high quality newspapers in quoting scientific publications from 1997 to 2009. Out of 88 articles, 46 contained inaccuracies though the majority was found to be insignificant and random. The study concludes that Danish broadsheet newspapers are ‘moderately inaccurate’ in quoting science publications but are not deliberately hyping scientific claims. However, the study also shows that 11% contained confusion of source, meaning that statements originating from press material or other news outlets were incorrectly credited to scientific peer-reviewed publications.

Effects of TV and Cable News Viewing on Climate Change Opinion, Knowledge, and Behavior

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Television News ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Fox News

For the general public, the news media are an important source of information about climate change. They have significant potential to influence public understanding and perceptions of the issue. Television news, because of its visual immediacy and authoritative presentation, is likely to be particularly influential. Numerous studies have shown that television news can affect public opinion directly and indirectly through processes such as agenda setting and framing. Moreover, even in a fragmented media environment largely dominated by online communication, television remains a prominent medium through which citizens follow news about science issues. Given this, scholars over the last several decades have endeavored to map the content of television news reporting on climate change and its effects on public opinion and knowledge. Results from this research suggest that journalists’ adherence to professional norms such as balance, novelty, dramatization, and personalization, along with economic pressures and sociopolitical influences, have produced inaccuracies and distortions in television news coverage of climate change. For example, content analyses have found that U.S. network television news stories tend to over-emphasize dramatic impacts and imagery, conflicts between political groups and personalities, and the uncertainty surrounding climate science and policy. At the same time, those skeptical of climate change have been able to exploit journalists’ norms of balance and objectivity to amplify their voices in television coverage of climate change. In particular, the increasingly opinionated 24-hour cable news networks have become a megaphone for ideological viewpoints on climate change. In the United States, a coordinated climate denial movement has used Fox News to effectively spread its message discrediting climate science. Coverage on Fox News is overwhelmingly dismissive of climate change and disparaging toward climate science and scientists. Coverage on CNN and MSNBC is more accepting of climate change; however, while MSNBC tends to vilify the conservative opposition to climate science and policy, and occasionally exaggerates the impacts of climate change, CNN sends more mixed signals. Survey and experimental analyses indicate that these trends in television news coverage of climate change have important effects on public opinion and may, in particular, fuel confusion and apathy among the general U.S. public and foster opinion extremity among strong partisans.

scholarly journals Metaphor use in the political communication of major resource projects in Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Hamilton Healy ◽  
Paul Williams
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Regulation ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science News ◽  
National Productivity ◽  
Metaphor Use ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the patterns of political communication surrounding the environmental regulation of major Australian resource projects during the Business Advisory Forum of April 2012. The Forum discussed business and government responses to major project approvals to improve national productivity at a time when these projects also posed significant implications for anthropogenic global warming. The article’s method is to examine print news articles published during this period. While the international literature has long demonstrated how the American fossil fuel lobby has employed metaphor to characterise climate change as a ‘non-problem’—therefore allegedly making regulation of greenhouse gas emissions economically and politically unnecessary—no Australian study of metaphor use in climate science news has been conducted. This article, in finding news stories on so-called ‘green tape’ environmental regulation were saturated with metaphor clusters, argues that journalistic metaphor use has made the complex issue of environmental regulation accessible to mass audiences. But, in so doing, we also argue this metaphor use has supported business and government’s position on environmental deregulation of major projects. Finally, this article also argues that some journalists’ use of metaphors encouraged policy-makers to adopt, and re-use, journalists’ own language and, in so doing, allow those journalists to be seen as complicit in the shaping of softer public attitudes to the impact of major projects on anthropogenic climate change.

Science communication and mediatised environmental conflict: A cautionary tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252098513
Author(s):  
Claire Konkes ◽  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
James Cook ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Tenured Position

When Australian physicist, Peter Ridd, lost his tenured position with James Cook University, he was called a ‘whistleblower’, ‘contrarian academic’ and ‘hero of climate science denial’. In this article, we examine the events surrounding his dismissal to better understand the role of science communication in organised climate change scepticism. We discuss the sophistry of his complaint to locate where and through what processes science communication becomes political communication. We argue that the prominence of scientists and scientific knowledge in debates about climate change locates science, as a social sphere or fifth pillar in Hutchins and Lester’s theory of mediatised environmental conflict. In doing so, we provide a model to better understand how science communication can be deployed during politicised debates.

scholarly journals Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 356 (6345) ◽  
pp. 1362-1369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Hsiang ◽  
Robert Kopp ◽  
Amir Jina ◽  
James Rising ◽  
Michael Delgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
Flexible Architecture ◽  
Econometric Analyses ◽  
Business As Usual

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).

scholarly journals Alan Betts: Green Energy Times, 2018

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Betts
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Green Energy ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Climate Change Denial ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Future

This is a collection of my 2018 articles in the Green Energy Times (http://www.greenenergytimes.org/ ).This series started in 2016. Many of these articles have been edited or updated from articles I wrote forthe Rutland Herald, sometimes with different titles and pictures.They blend science and opinion with a systems perspective, and encourage the reader to explorealternative and hopeful paths for their families and society. They are written so that a scientist willperceive them as accurate (although simplified); while the public can relate their tangible experience ofweather and climate to the much less tangible issues of climate change, energy policy and strategies forliving sustainably with the earth system.The politically motivated attacks on climate science by the current president have sharpened my politicalcommentary this year; since climate change denial may bring immense suffering to our children and lifeon Earth.I believe that earth scientists have a responsibility to communicate clearly and directly to the public1 –aswe all share responsibility for the future of the Earth. We must deepen our collective understanding, sowe can make a collective decision to build a resilient future.

scholarly journals Climate Change, Uncertainty and Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Hopster
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Deep Uncertainty ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Moral Uncertainty ◽  
Climate Economics ◽  
Climate Change Uncertainty ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Climate Uncertainty

While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the IPCC’s preferred way of representing uncertainties and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether or not decision-makers find themselves in a context of deep uncertainty. The chapter concludes by offering two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, faced with the various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse.

scholarly journals Community Forests Prepare for Climate Change

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Peterson ◽  
Leslie Brandt ◽  
Emile Elias ◽  
Sarah Hurteau
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Community Forests ◽  
Urban Tree

Cities across the United States are feeling the heat as they struggle to integrate climate science into on-the-ground decisionmaking regarding urban tree planting and management.

scholarly journals "Crisis, Conspiracy, and Community in Evangelical Climate Denial"

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-91
Author(s):  
Aaron Ricker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Special Knowledge ◽  
Definition Of

Statistically speaking, American Evangelical Christians are uniquely attracted to apocalyptic conspiracy theories when it comes to the topic of climate change. Since Evangelicals constitute a powerful voting/lobbying/shopping bloc, it is worth asking why this might be the case and what (if anything) can be done about it. To this end, my study considers the relevance of two major cultural tributaries to American Evangelical pop apocalyptic culture. In the first section I consider biblical apocalyptic culture and argue that the characteristic apocalyptic promise to disclose hidden divine plans to a misunderstood but soon-tobe- vindicated elect group naturally entails conspiracy-theory thinking. I argue further that apocalyptic imagination and conspiracy-theory thinking are powerful tools for the definition of identity and community. In the second section I turn my attention to the kind of Evangelical pop apocalyptic culture that helped push climate science denial into the Christian mainstream. I argue that in pop apocalyptic productions like the influential tracts and comics of Jack T. Chick, the image of the elect as the persecuted and powerful bearers of special knowledge found a new lease on life, and continues to fascinate millions with the attractive offer of somebody special to be and somewhere special to belong. I conclude that apocalyptic questions of crisis and conspiracy have a sociological function, as means to the end of defining social identity. Understanding this concrete function of conspiracy-theory thinking in Christian apocalyptic imagination can help in assessing and addressing the troubling phenomenon of Evangelical climate denial.

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