scholarly journals From Doubt to Distrust: Reassessing the Partisan Climate Gap

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Bugden
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Sociology ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Political Partisanship

Nowhere is the partisan politicization of science more pronounced than on the subject of climate change, with Republican and Democratic voters divided on whether climate change exists and how to address it. Existing research explains the partisan climate gap through a process of manufactured doubt, with a network of corporate and conservative organizations using their considerable resources to deny the reality of climate change and its anthropogenic causes, and to spread denial of climate science among conservative and Republican voters. I argue that this explanation is incomplete and increasingly unable to address the contours of the contemporary partisan climate gap. Building on existing research in science and technology studies, environmental sociology, and political partisanship, I explore an alternative hypothesis for the partisan climate gap: distrust in science. I apply a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis to a large non-probability sample of Democrats and Republicans (n = 1808). Results show that lower levels of trust in science among Republicans explains a larger amount of the partisan climate gap than does climate science denial. Rather than being purely a product of manufactured doubt, contemporary climate partisanship is largely the product of manufactured distrust, reflecting an anti-science conservative movement that predates and extends beyond the climate change countermovement and its efforts to deny climate science. I conclude by discussing how focusing on manufactured distrust, in conjunction with manufactured doubt, can enrich the sociological study of climate change and science communication.

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.

Climate science and YouTube: deniers, memes, and Trojan horses

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Search Engine ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Educational Video ◽  
Video Content ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

<p>YouTube is the world's second largest search engine, and serves as a primary source of entertainment for billions of people around the world. Yet while science communication on the website is more popular than ever, discussion of climate science is dominated by - largely scientifically untrained - individuals who are skeptical of the overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real. Over the past ten years I have built up an extensive audience communicating science - and climate science in particular - on YouTube, attempting to place credible science in the forefront of the discussion. In this talk I will discuss my approach to making content for the website, dissect successful and less successful projects, review feedback from my audience, and break down my process of converting research into entertaining, educational video content.</p>

scholarly journals Opinions of 12 to 13-year-olds in Austria and Australia on the worry, cause and imminence of Climate Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inez Harker-Schuch ◽  
Frank Mills ◽  
Steven Lade ◽  
Rebecca Colvin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Age Group ◽  
School Students ◽  
Cultural Worldview ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Positive Climate

AbstractAlthough we are in the third decade of climate science communication as a discipline, and there is overwhelming scientific consensus and physical evidence for climate change, the general public continues to wrestle with climate change policy and advocacy. Early adolescence (12 to 13 years old) is a critical but under-researched demographic for the formation of attitudes related to climate change. This paper presents opinions on the worry, cause, and imminence of climate change that were collected fromn=463 1styear secondary school students (12-13 years old) in public secondary schools in inner-urban centres in Austria and Australia. Overall, 86.83% of eligible respondents agreed that climate change was probably or definitely something we should worry about, 80.33% agreed that climate change was probably or definitely caused by humans, and 83.17% agreed that climate change was probably or definitely something that was happening now. The respondents’ opinions were also compared to their respective adult population, with Australian 12-13 year olds showing strong positive climate-friendly attitudes, both in comparison to their adult population, and to their Austrian peers. In addition, although the opinions of Austrian 12-13 year olds were quite high, they did not reflect the higher climate-friendly opinions of their adult community. Our results suggest that socio-cultural worldview or socio-cultural cognition theory may not have the influence on this age group as it does on the respective adult population – and, if they are affected, there are attitudes or factors in this age group which resist the opinion-influence from their mature community. These findings are significant as early adolescents may be pivotal in the climate science communication arena and investigating their opinions with regard to climate change may offer an unexplored and under-utilised target for future communication efforts and climate literacy programmes.

Youth as Climate Change Messengers: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 814-823
Author(s):  
Jill Hendrickson Lohmeier ◽  
Shanna Rose Thompson ◽  
Robert F. Chen ◽  
Stephen Mishol
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
General Public ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Science Learning ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Science Content ◽  
The Public

Artwork created by children can effectively communicate science content, especially for topics that are of universal concern for the public but may cause apprehension, like climate change. This commentary describes artwork from a youth art contest about climate change in which the winning art was displayed on public buses. Young artists learned about climate science while creating images that adults and youth easily engaged with in public spaces. Thus, we suggest that connecting youth with science through art, and then using youth-generated art to engage the general public in science learning can be an effective vehicle for science communication.

Corporate communication about climate science

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Jagadish Thaker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Fortune 500 ◽  
Corporate Communication ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
Poor Reporting ◽  
Reliable Scale

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyze how top corporations in New Zealand, Australia and the Global Fortune 500 group communicate about climate science. Design/methodology/approach A combination of keyword count and quantitative content analysis is used to develop a reliable set of indicators to measure corporate communication about climate science. Findings Just a few corporations mention or explicitly agree with scientific consensus on climate change and few report science-based targets. They report more frequently on societal risks of climate change, as well as business contribution and responsibility. New Zealand based corporations generally do poor reporting compared to Australian corporations, who do as well as the biggest corporations in the world. Research limitations/implications There is a further need for cross-country research and for more longitudinal analysis to understand how organizations communicate about scientific issues to its stakeholders. Practical implications This paper can inform communication managers about the need to pay attention to how their communication, individually and in comparison with their peers, is likely interpreted by the stakeholders. Managers may attend to scientific consensus messaging to gain stakeholder approval for ambitious business actions on climate change. Social implications Organizations are powerful social and economic drivers. Understanding how they interpret and communicate a scientific issue has implications for public and policy discourses and outcomes. Originality/value This is the first paper to comparatively identify common and contextual drivers of business communication of complex scientific issues. A reliable scale to measure climate science communication by corporations will be helpful for future researchers to replicate in other sectors.

scholarly journals Don’t you see that its cold! Exploring the roles of cognitive reflection, climate science literacy, illusion of knowledge, and political orientation in climate change skepticism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastien Trémolière ◽  
Hakim Djeriouat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Total N ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Political Partisanship ◽  
Final Study ◽  
Confounding Variables ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change

The issue of climate change has become central in recent years as alarming data accumulate. It nevertheless has its critics, consisting of people denying climate change orminimizing the responsibility of human beings in the process. This skepticism partly derives from the complexity of the topic, encouraging people to rely on cognitive shortcuts to grasp the phenomenon. We question the role of cognitive reflection, general and climate changerelated knowledge, overconfidence, and political partisanship (plus additional expected confounding variables) in this process through a package of three studies (total N = 1031). In a first study, we showed that an intuitive mindset predicted greater skepticism relative to an analytical mindset while controlling for cognitive ability and the degree to which individuals value science, suggesting that cognitive sophistication and trust are two key parameters of climate change skepticism. A second study highlighted that climate science knowledge and knowledge overconfidence stood out as strong and independent predictors of skepticism relative to cognitive reflection. A final study revealed that cognitive reflection and climate change knowledge generated less influence on climate change skepticism among conservatives than among liberals and moderates, suggesting that reliance on deliberative thinking and knowledgeability on climate science are not sufficient to mitigate climate change skepticism among conservatives. We discuss the critical interplay between cognitive processes and political partisanship in this ongoing debate.

scholarly journals Climate change opinions in online debate sites

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115
Author(s):  
Adrian Groza ◽  
Pinar Ozturk ◽  
Radu Razvan-Slavescu ◽  
Anca Marginean
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Computational Support ◽  
Textual Entailment ◽  
Argumentative Texts ◽  
Online Debate

Debate sites in social media provide a unified platform for citizens to discuss controversial questions and to put forward their ideas and arguments on the issues of common interest. Opinions of citizens may provide useful knowledge to stakeholders but manual analysis of arguments in debate sites is tedious, while computational support to this end has been rather scarce. We focus here on developing a technical instrumentation for making sense of a set of online arguments and aggregating them into usable results for policy making and climate science communication. Our objectives are: (i) to aggregate arguments posted for a certain debate topic, (ii) to consolidate opinions posted under several but related topics either in the same or different debate site, and (iii) to identify possible linguistic characteristics of the argumentative texts. For the first objective, we propose a voting method based on subjective logic [13]. For the second objective, we assess the semantic similarity between two debate topics based on textual entailment [28]. For the third objective, we employ various existing methods for lexical analysis such as frequency analysis or readability indexes. Although we focused here on the climate change, the method can be applied to any domain.

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).

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