scholarly journals Leveraging cognitive consistency to nudge conservative climate change beliefs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Gehlbach ◽  
Carly D Robinson ◽  
Christine Vriesema
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Cognitive Consistency ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Change Beliefs ◽  
Political Divide

People feel motivated to maintain consistency across many domains in life. When it comes to climate change, many find themselves motivated to maintain consistency with others, e.g., by doubting climate change to cohere with friends’ and neighbors’ beliefs. The resulting climate skepticism has derailed discussions to address the issue collectively in the United States. To counteract these social consistency pressures, we developed a cognitive consistency intervention for climate skeptics. We first demonstrated that most people share substantial faith in a variety of scientific findings, across disciplines ranging from medicine to astronomy. Next, we show that conservative participants who first acknowledge several general contributions of science subsequently report significantly stronger beliefs in climate science (as compared to conservatives who are asked only about their climate science beliefs). These findings provide an encouraging proof-of-concept for how an inclusive climate conversation might be initiated across the political divide.

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 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.

The Paradox of Partisanship in the United States

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Campbell ◽  
Ove K. Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political System ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Funding ◽  
Research Organizations ◽  
Political Divide

This chapter discusses how the United States experienced a crisis of partisanship that was marked by a continuing escalation in ideological rancor, polarization, and divisiveness in Washington. This entailed the proliferation of a more competitive and often contentious set of private policy research organizations thanks to numerous sources of tax deductible private funding from corporations and wealthy individuals, and a fragmented and porous political system. Paradoxically, as the crisis of partisanship reached an unprecedented level in the late 1990s and early 2000s, cooperation among some of these organizations broke out across the political divide due to the efforts of those who sensed the disastrous consequences of such mean-spirited partisanship for the country and for the credibility of their research organizations.

scholarly journals The Prevalence and Rationale for Presenting an Opposing Viewpoint in Climate Change Reporting: Findings from a U.S. National Survey of TV Weathercasters

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. F. Timm ◽  
Edward W. Maibach ◽  
Maxwell Boykoff ◽  
Teresa A. Myers ◽  
Melissa A. Broeckelman-Post
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
Differences Of Opinion

AbstractThe journalistic norm of balance has been described as the practice of giving equal weight to different sides of a story; false balance is balanced reporting when the weight of evidence strongly favors one side over others—for example, the reality of human-caused climate change. False balance is problematic because it skews public perception of expert agreement. Through formative interviews and a survey of American weathercasters about climate change reporting, we found that objectivity and balance—topics that have frequently been studied with environmental journalists—are also relevant to understanding climate change reporting among weathercasters. Questions about the practice of and reasons for presenting an opposing viewpoint when reporting on climate change were included in a 2017 census survey of weathercasters working in the United States (N = 480; response rate = 22%). When reporting on climate change, 35% of weathercasters present an opposing viewpoint “always” or “most of the time.” Their rationale for reporting opposing viewpoints included the journalistic norms of objectivity and balanced reporting (53%), their perceived uncertainty of climate science (21%), to acknowledge differences of opinion (17%), to maintain credibility (14%), and to strengthen the story (7%). These findings show that climate change reporting from weathercasters sometimes includes opposing viewpoints, and possibly a false balance, but further research is necessary. Moreover, prior research has shown that the climate reporting practices among weathercasters are evolving rapidly and so the problem of false-balance reporting may already be self-correcting.

scholarly journals The dysphoric body politic, or Seizing the means of imagination

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Ledbetter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Conditions

Although escapism has been used pejoratively in describing fandom, it might be reframed as a reaction to untenable external circumstances. This reformulation of escapism is a starting point for examining how fan fiction is a political practice. In light of the political upheaval in the United States as well as the existential threat of climate change, this is a topical, even urgent, collective project for producing survivable conditions. Fan fiction uniquely diagnoses and imagines alternatives to oppressive political conditions. The lens of political dysphoria, adapted from critical transgender studies and used here to describe the dissonance between dominant political structures and desiring subjects, permits exploration of how fan fiction enables subjects to acknowledge oppressive political conditions, engage in coalitional rebellion, and reimagine societal structures for collective liberation.

scholarly journals Ideology and the Narrative of Climate Skepticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (12) ◽  
pp. ES415-ES421
Author(s):  
Raul P. Lejano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Scientific Argument

Abstract It is reasonable to assume that more effective communication of climate science might be the remedy for widespread climate skepticism. However, narrative analysis of climate-skeptical discourse suggests it can be otherwise. Taking the United States as a case in point, we argue how at least some forms of climate skepticism are founded upon an ideological narrative that (for its adherents) is prior to, or more fundamental than, the issue of climate. In other words, skepticism may not always (or even usually) be fundamentally about climate to begin with. This more basic, universal, ideological construct at the root of climate skepticism encompasses social status, race and ethnicity, class, culture, and other social conditions. If climate-skeptical discourse in the United States is commonly built upon a genetic metanarrative that is really about social fracture, it may be resilient to scientific argument. It is quite possible that responding to climate skepticism will require addressing the more basic ideological divide and challenging the underlying genetic narrative. In the rest of the essay, we sketch out possible avenues for positive steps forward.

Exploratory Geovisualization of the Character and Distribution of American Climate Change Beliefs

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Johnathan W. Sugg
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Organizing Map ◽  
The Public ◽  
Choropleth Maps ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Change Beliefs ◽  
Self Organizing

AbstractAmericans remain polarized about climate change. However, recent scholarship reveals a plurality of climate change opinions among the public, with nontrivial support for a range of awareness, risk perceptions, and policy prescriptions. This study uses publicly available opinion estimates to examine the geographic variability of American climate change opinions and maps them as regions that share similarities or differences in the character of their beliefs. The exploratory geovisual environment of a self-organizing map is used to compare the support for 56 different climate opinions across all counties in the United States and arrange them into a spatially coherent grid of nodes. To facilitate the exploration of the patterns, a statistical cluster analysis groups together counties with the most similar climate beliefs. Choropleth maps visualize the clustering results from the self-organizing map. This study finds six groups of climate beliefs in which member counties exhibit a distinct regionality across the United States and share similarities in the magnitude of support for specific opinions. Groups that generally exhibit high or low levels of support for climate change awareness, risk perceptions, and policy prescriptions vary in their relative support for specific opinions. The results provide a nuanced understanding of different types of climate change opinions and where they exist geographically.

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