Environmental Themes in Popular Narratives

Questions about climate change elicit some of the widest political divisions of any items on recent US surveys. Severe polarization affects even basic questions about the reality of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), or whether most scientists agree that humans are changing Earth's climate. Statements about scientific consensus have been contentious among social scientists, with some arguing for consensus awareness as a " gateway cognition " that leads to greater public acceptance of ACC, but others characterizing consensus messaging (deliberate communication about the level of scientific agreement) as a counterproductive tactic that exacerbates polarization. A series of statewide surveys, with nationwide benchmarks, repeated questions about the reality of ACC and scientific consensus many times over 2010 to 2016. These data permit tests for change in beliefs and polarization. ACC and consensus beliefs have similar trends and individual background predictors. Both rose gradually by about ten points over 2010– 2016, showing no abrupt shifts that might correspond to events such as scientific reports, leadership statements or weather. Growing awareness of the scientific consensus, whether from deliberate messaging or the cumulative impact of many studies and publicly-engaged scientists, provides the most plausible explanation for this rise in both series. In state-level data, the gap between liberal and conservative views on the reality of ACC did not widen over this period, while the liberal–conservative gap regarding existence of a scientific consensus narrowed.

Earth's Future, 2014

Abstract Nearly all climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate change is occurring, yet half of Americans do not know or do not believe that a scientific consensus has been reached. That such a large proportion of Americans do not understand that there is a near-unanimous scientific consensus about the basic facts of climate change matters, a lot. This essay briefly explains why, and what climate science societies and individual climate scientists can do to set the record straight.

Political and media debate on the existence and causes of climate change has become increasingly factious in several western countries, often resting on claims and counter-claims about what most citizens really think. There are several well-established phenomena in psychology about how people perceive the prevalence of opinions, including the false consensus effect 1 (a tendency to overestimate how common one's 'own' opinion is) and pluralistic ignorance 2 (where most people privately reject an opinion, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it). We investigated these biases in people's opinions about the existence and causes of climate change. In two surveys conducted 12 months apart in Australia (n = 5,036; n = 5,030), respondents were asked their own opinion about the nature of climate change, and then asked to estimate levels of opinion among the general population. We demonstrate that opinions about climate change are subject to strong false consensus effects, that people grossly overestimate the numbers of people who reject the existence of climate change in the broader community, and that people with high false consensus bias are less likely to change their opinions.

This exploratory study examines whether readers'assessments of the certainty of scientific findings depend on characteristics of news stories. An experimental design tested whether adding controversy and/or context to a news story about global warming influenced readers' perceptions of its certainty. Respondents (N = 209) were randomly assigned to read one treatment and answer a questionnaire. Overall, there was a significant difference in readers'assessment of the certainty of global warming across treatments (F = 12.59, p = .00). The context treatment produced the highest level of certainty about global warming and differed significantly from the control treatment (with neither context nor controversy) and from the controversy treatment. Control and controversy treatments resulted in the lowest levels of certainty. There was an interaction effect between treatment and environmental ideology upon certainty (F = 1.64, p = .03) and a correlation between environmental ideology and prior certainty about global warming (r = .35, p = .01), suggesting that those with proenvironmental ideology were less swayed by the treatments.

Research into the reliability of news reports on ‘global warming’ published by the UOL media group, Folha.com and Folha de S. Paulo reveals a tendency for positions to be polarized between complete agreement with the assertion that the causes are entirely anthropogenic (the dominant position) and complete denial. The sample comprised 676 news items from more than 3,000 published on the topic between October 2007 and October 2008. The study tested the hypothesis that the news output of the three media outlets is dominated by the positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In absolute terms, the panel is the most frequently cited source, since just seven news items comprised exceptions to the ‘consensus.’ These contrary opinions made up 1.03% of the sample.

Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 2016

Cook et al. (2013) reported a 97% scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), based on a study of 11,944 abstracts in peer-reviewed science journals from 1991-2011. This estimate was corroborated by a complementary survey of the authors of the papers. Powell (2016) claims that the Cook et al. methodology was flawed and that the true consensus is virtually unanimous at 99.99%. Powell's method underestimates the level of disagreement because it relies on finding explicit rejection statements in the abstracts of published papers as well as the assumption that abstracts without a stated position endorse the consensus. However, the Cook et al. results show that rejecting authors also published abstracts expressing no position, and survey responses revealed that papers may express disagreement with AGW despite the absence of a rejection statement in the abstract. Cook et al.'s 97% result takes these cases into account. Furthermore, contrary to Powell's claims, we show quantitatively that the Cook et al. method is valid for the now universally accepted theory of plate tectonics. The ~3% of scientists who either dispute or are undecided about AGW do not present a coherent case against the theory and their arguments have invariably been rebutted. Nevertheless, because of the politicization of the issue, dissenters are accorded undue attention in the media and in public debate (Boykoff, 2013). Surveys reveal a large gap between the public perception of the degree of scientific consensus on AGW and reality. We argue that it is the size of this gap, rather than the small difference between 97% and 99.99%, that matters in communicating the true state of scientific opinion to the public.

Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 2011

Indeed, numerous polls indicate a decline in public acceptance of CC over the past two to three years (although some polls show a slight uptick since mid-2010). For example, Gallup Polls, trends for which appear in the figure here, show substantial declines from 2008 to 2010 in the percentages of Americans believing that global warming is already occurring (61 percent to 50 percent); that it is due more to human activities than natural changes (58 percent to 50 percent); and that most scientists believe it is occurring (65 percent to 52 ...

Numerous factors shape citizens' beliefs about global warming, but there is very little research that compares the views of the public with key actors in the policymaking process. We analyze data from simultaneous and parallel surveys of (1) the u.S. public, (2) scientists who actively publish research on energy technologies in the united States, and (3) congressional policy advisors and find that beliefs about global warming vary markedly among them. Scientists and policy advisors are more likely than the public to express a belief in the existence and anthropogenic nature of global warming. We also find ideological polarization about global warming in all three groups, although scientists are less polarized than the public and policy advisors over whether global warming is actually occurring. Alarmingly, there is evidence that the ideological divide about global warming gets significantly larger according to respondents' knowledge about politics, energy, and science.

Nature Climate Change, 2015

Public Understanding of Science

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change exists and is caused by human activity. It has been argued that communicating the consensus can counter climate scepticism, given that perceived scientific consensus is a major factor predicting public belief that climate change is anthropogenic. However, individuals may hold different models of science, potentially affecting their interpretation of scientific consensus. Using representative surveys in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Norway, we assessed whether the relationship between perceived scientific consensus and belief in anthropogenic climate change is conditioned by a person’s viewing science as ‘the search for truth’ or as ‘debate’. Results show that perceived scientific consensus is higher among climate change believers and moreover, significantly predicts belief in anthropogenic climate change. This relationship is stronger among people holding a model of science as the ‘search for truth’. These results help to...