Uncertainty, scepticism and attitudes towards climate change: biased assimilation and attitude polarisation

‘Scepticism’ in public attitudes towards climate change is seen as a significant barrier to public engagement. In an experimental study, we measured participants’ scepticism about climate change before and after reading two newspaper editorials that made opposing claims about the reality and seriousness of climate change (designed to generate uncertainty). A well-established social psychological finding is that people with opposing attitudes often assimilate evidence in a way that is biased towards their existing attitudinal position, which may lead to attitude polarisation. We found that people who were less sceptical about climate change evaluated the convincingness and reliability of the editorials in a markedly different way to people who were more sceptical about climate change, demonstrating biased assimilation of the information. In both groups, attitudes towards climate change became significantly more sceptical after reading the editorials, but we observed no evidence of attitude polarisation—that is, the attitudes of these two groups did not diverge. The results are the first application of the well-established assimilation and polarisation paradigm to attitudes about climate change, with important implications for anticipating how uncertainty—in the form of conflicting information—may impact on public engagement with climate change.     

Declining public concern about climate change: Can we blame the great recession?

Social surveys suggest that the American public's concern about climate change has declined dramatically since 2008. This has led to a search for explanations for this decline, and great deal of speculation that there has been a fundamental shift in public trust in climate science. We evaluate over thirty years of public opinion data about global warming and the environment, and suggest that the decline in belief about climate change is most likely driven by the economic insecurity caused by the Great Recession. Evidence from European nations further supports an economic explanation for changing public opinion. The pattern is consistent with more than forty years of public opinion about environmental policy. Popular alternative explanations for declining support – partisan politicization, biased media coverage, fluctuations in short-term weather conditions – are unable to explain the suddenness and timing of opinion trends. The implication of these findings is that the “crisis of confidence” in climate change will likely rebound after labor market conditions improve, but not until then.     

山区居民对气候变化及其影响与适应的感知分析——以玉龙雪山地区为例

通过问卷调查和访谈,揭示了青藏高原东南缘玉龙雪山地区居民对当地气候变化及其影响与适应的感知认识。结果表明：居民对玉龙雪山地区气候变化的感知强度与科学研究结果总体上具有很高的一致性。居民对气候变化对农业环境影响的感知不很强烈,认为气候变化并未影响到农作物长势和产量,但对气候变化导致农作物病虫害略有增加和作物生长期延长的感知却持较高赞同度。居民对气候变化及其适应的感知强度总体上与海拔高度相关显著,而对气候变化及其影响的感知则与年龄显著相关。气候变化已促使山区居民调整产业结构,发展低耗水农业经济,并积极参与山区旅游、外出打工,以弥补微薄的农业收入。同时,居民也期望政府能够给予他们一定的经济补偿,以弥补由于干旱和倒春寒等带来的经济损失。     

A new approach for evaluating climate change communication

Many scholars study when climate change communication increases citizen engagement. Yet, past work has largely used public opinion-based measures of engagement to evaluate alternative frames. In this paper, we argue for a new approach to evaluation, which is premised on research on the policy-making process showing that space on the political agenda and, ultimately, policy change are more likely to arise in response to changes in both public opinion and collective political action. Thus, we argue that alternative frames should be evaluated based on their consequences for both. This is especially critical given that frames can have divergent effects on attitudes and behavior. Using a combination of field and survey experiments, we apply our approach to evaluate two frames related to climate change risks. We find that they heighten people’s concern about climate change yet decrease their rate of political action to express that concern. Our results suggest caution with regard to these frames in particular and that, more generally, frames that might seem advantageous when examining public opinion may not be when political behavior is analyzed.

     

The influence of national temperature fluctuations on opinions about climate change in the U.S. since 1990

Public opinion in the United States about human-caused climate change has varied over the past 20 years, despite an increasing consensus about the issue in the expert community. Attitudes about climate change have been attributed to a number of factors including personal values, political ideology, the media environment and personal experience. Recent studies have found evidence that the temperature can influence one’s opinion about climate change and willingness to change behaviour and/or support climate policy. Although there is some evidence that individual cool or warm years have influenced large-scale opinion about climate change, the extent to which temperature can explain the past variability in public opinion and public discourse about climate change at the national level is not known. Here we isolate the relationship between opinion about climate change and temperature at the national scale, using data from opinion polls, a discourse analysis of opinion articles from five major daily newspapers, and a national air temperature database. The fraction of respondents to national polls who express “belief in” or “worry about” climate change is found to be significantly correlated to U.S. mean temperature anomalies over the previous 3–12 months. In addition, the fraction of editorial and opinion articles which “agree” with the expert consensus on climate change is also found to be significantly correlated to U.S. mean temperature anomalies at seasonal and annual scales. These results suggest that a fraction of the past variance in American views about climate change could potentially be explained by climate variability.     

Climate change impacts on spatial patterns in drought risk in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon, USA

Climate change is likely to lead more frequent droughts in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of America. Rising air temperature will reduce winter snowfall and increase earlier snowmelt, subsequently reducing summer flows. Longer crop-growing season caused by higher temperatures will lead to increases in evapotranspiration and irrigation water demand, which could exacerbate drought damage. However, the impacts of climate change on drought risk will vary over space and time. Thus, spatially explicit drought assessment can help water resource managers and planners to better cope with risk. This study seeks to identify possible drought-vulnerable regions in the Willamette River Basin of the PNW. In order to estimate drought risk in a spatially explicit way, relative Standardized Precipitation Index (rSPI) and relative Standardized Runoff Index (rSRI) were employed. Statistically downscaled climate simulations forcing two greenhouse gas emission scenarios, A1B and B1, were used to investigate the possible changes in drought frequency with 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24-month time scales. The results of rSPI and rSRI showed an increase in the short-term frequency of drought due to decreases in summer precipitation and snowmelt. However, long-term drought showed no change or a slight decreasing pattern due to increases in winter precipitation and runoff. According to the local index of spatial autocorrelation analysis, the Willamette Valley region was more vulnerable (hot spot) to drought risk than the mountainous regions of the Western Cascades and the High Cascades (cold spot). Although the hydrology of the Western Cascades and the High Cascades will be affected by climate change, these regions will remain relatively water-rich. This suggests that improving the water transfer system could be a reasonable climate adaptation option. Additionally, these results showed that the spatial patterns of drought risk change were affected by drought indices, such that appropriate drought index selection will be important in future studies of climate impacts on spatial drought risk.     

Estimating the Impact of Global Change on Flood and Drought Risks in Europe: A Continental, Integrated Analysis

Most studies on the impact of climate change on regional water resources focus on long-term average flows or mean water availability, and they rarely take the effects of altered human water use into account. When analyzing extreme events such as floods and droughts, the assessments are typically confined to smaller areas and case studies. At the same time it is acknowledged that climate change may severely alter the risk of hydrological extremes over large regional scales, and that human water use will put additional pressure on future water resources. In an attempt to bridge these various aspects, this paper presents a first-time continental, integrated analysis of possible impacts of global change (here defined as climate and water use change) on future flood and drought frequencies for the selected study area of Europe. The global integrated water model WaterGAP is evaluated regarding its capability to simulate high and low-flow regimes and is then applied to calculate relative changes in flood and drought frequencies. The results indicate large ‘critical regions’ for which significant changes in flood or drought risks are expected under the proposed global change scenarios. The regions most prone to a rise in flood frequencies are northern to northeastern Europe, while southern and southeastern Europe show significant increases in drought frequencies. In the critical regions, events with an intensity of today's 100-year floods and droughts may recur every 10–50 years by the 2070s. Though interim and preliminary, and despite the inherent uncertainties in the presented approach, the results underpin the importance of developing mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change impacts on a continental scale.     

Does socioeconomic status moderate the political divide on climate change? The roles of education,income, and individualism

Previous research documents that U.S. conservatives, and conservative white males in particular, tend to dismiss the threat of climate change more than others in the U.S. public. Other research indicates that higher education and income can each exacerbate the dismissive tendencies of the political Right. Bridging these lines of research, the present study examines the extent to which higher education and/or income moderate the ideological divide and the “conservative white male effect” on several climate change opinions, and whether these effects are mediated by an individualistic worldview (e.g., valuing individual liberty and limited government). Using nationally representative survey data of U.S. adults from 2008 to 2017 (N = 20,024), we find that across all beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy preferences examined, the ideological divide strengthens with both higher education and higher income. However, educational attainment plays a stronger role than income in polarizing the views of conservative white males. Further analyses support the hypothesis that differences in individualism partially explain the increased political polarization among more educated and higher-income adults, as well as greater dismissiveness among conservative white males relative to other demographic groups. These results highlight key moderators of opinion polarization, as well as ideological differences among conservatives, that are often overlooked in public discourse about climate change. Implications for climate change education and communication across demographic groups are considered.     

What explains public support for climate policies? A review of empirical and experimental studies

The lack of broad public support prevents the implementation of effective climate policies. This article aims to examine why citizens support or reject climate policies. For this purpose, we provide a cross-disciplinary overview of empirical and experimental research on public attitudes and preferences that has emerged in the last few years. The various factors influencing policy support are divided into three general categories: (1) social-psychological factors and climate change perception, such as the positive influences of left-wing political orientation, egalitarian worldviews, environmental and self-transcendent values, climate change knowledge, risk perception, or emotions like interest and hope; (2) the perception of climate policy and its design, which includes, among others, the preference of pull over push measures, the positive role of perceived policy effectiveness, the level of policy costs, as well as the positive effect of perceived policy fairness and the recycling of potential policy revenues; (3) contextual factors, such as the positive influence of social trust, norms and participation, wider economic, political and geographical aspects, or the different effects of specific media events and communications. Finally, we discuss the findings and provide suggestions for future research.

Policy relevance

Public opinion is a significant determinant of policy change in democratic countries. Policy makers may be reluctant to implement climate policies if they expect public opposition. This article seeks to provide a better understanding of the various factors influencing public responses to climate policy proposals. Most of the studied factors include perceptions about climate change, policy and its attributes, all of which are amenable to intervention. The acquired insights can thus assist in improving policy design and communication with the overarching objective to garner more public support for effective climate policy.     

Politics eclipses climate extremes for climate change perceptions

Whether or not actual shifts in climate influence public perceptions of climate change remains an open question, one with important implications for societal response to climate change. We use the most comprehensive public opinion survey data on climate change available for the US to examine effects of annual and seasonal climate variation. Our results show that political orientation has the most important effect in shaping public perceptions about the timing and seriousness of climate change. Objective climatic conditions do not influence Americans’ perceptions of the timing of climate change and only have a negligible effect on perceptions about the seriousness of climate change. These results suggest that further changes in climatic conditions are unlikely to produce noticeable shifts in Americans’ climate change perceptions.     

Adapting agriculture to climate change: a review

The agricultural sector is highly vulnerable to future climate changes and climate variability, including increases in the incidence of extreme climate events. Changes in temperature and precipitation will result in changes in land and water regimes that will subsequently affect agricultural productivity. Given the gradual change of climate in the past, historically, farmers have adapted in an autonomous manner. However, with large and discrete climate change anticipated by the end of this century, planned and transformational changes will be needed. In light of these, the focus of this review is on farm-level and farmers responses to the challenges of climate change both spatially and over time. In this review of adapting agriculture to climate change, the nature, extent, and causes of climate change are analyzed and assessed. These provide the context for adapting agriculture to climate change. The review identifies the binding constraints to adaptation at the farm level. Four major priority areas are identified to relax these constraints, where new initiatives would be required, i.e., information generation and dissemination to enhance farm-level awareness, research and development (R&D) in agricultural technology, policy formulation that facilitates appropriate adaptation at the farm level, and strengthening partnerships among the relevant stakeholders. Forging partnerships among R&D providers, policy makers, extension agencies, and farmers would be at the heart of transformational adaptation to climate change at the farm level. In effecting this transformational change, sustained efforts would be needed for the attendant requirements of climate and weather forecasting and innovation, farmer’s training, and further research to improve the quality of information, invention, and application in agriculture. The investment required for these would be highly significant. The review suggests a sequenced approach through grouping research initiatives into short-term, medium-term, and long-term initiatives, with each initiative in one stage contributing to initiatives in a subsequent stage. The learning by doing inherent in such a process-oriented approach is a requirement owing to the many uncertainties associated with climate change.     

Climate Warming and Water Management Adaptation for California

The ability of California's water supply system to adapt to long-term climatic and demographic changes is examined. Two climate warming and a historical climate scenario are examined with population and land use estimates for the year 2100 using a statewide economic-engineering optimization model of water supply management. Methodologically, the results of this analysis indicate that for long-term climate change studies of complex systems, there is considerable value in including other major changes expected during a long-term time-frame (such as population changes), allowing the system to adapt to changes in conditions (a common feature of human societies), and representing the system in sufficient hydrologic and operational detail and breadth to allow significant adaptation. While the policy results of this study are preliminary, they point to a considerable engineering and economic ability of complex, diverse, and inter-tied systems to adapt to significant changes in climate and population. More specifically, California's water supply system appears physically capable of adapting to significant changes in climate and population, albeit at a significant cost. Such adaptation would entail large changes in the operation of California's large groundwater storage capacity, significant transfers of water among water users, and some adoption of new technologies.     

Attribution matters: Revisiting the link between extreme weather experience and climate change mitigation responses

The literature suggests that extreme weather experiences have potential to increase climate change engagement by influencing the way people perceive the proximity and implications of climate change. Yet, limited attention has been directed at investigating how individual differences in the subjective interpretation of extreme weather events as indications of climate change moderate the link between extreme weather experiences and climate change attitudes. This article contends that subjective attribution of extreme weather events to climate change is a necessary condition for extreme weather experiences to be translated into climate change mitigation responses, and that subjective attribution of extreme weather to climate change is influenced by the psychological and social contexts in which individuals appraise their experiences with extreme weather. Using survey data gathered in the aftermath of severe flooding across the UK in winter 2013/2014, personal experience of this flooding event is shown to only directly predict perceived threat from climate change, and indirectly predict climate change mitigation responses, among individuals who subjectively attributed the floods to climate change. Additionally, subjective attribution of the floods to climate change is significantly predicted by pre-existing climate change belief, political affiliation and perceived normative cues. Attempts to harness extreme weather experiences as a route to engaging the public must be attentive to the heterogeneity of opinion on the attributability of extreme weather events to climate change.     

IPCC AR6报告解读：气候变化与水安全

保障水安全是应对和缓解气候变化的核心问题,也是实现可持续发展的前提。IPCC第六次评估报告（AR6）第二工作组报告单独设立第四章“水”,分析了气候变化对全球水循环的影响,评估了水循环变化对人类社会和生态系统的影响,指出了当前与未来的水安全风险,分析了与水相关适应措施的收益与成效。报告显示,人类活动导致的气候变化加速了全球水文循环,对水安全产生负面影响,面临水安全风险的人口与地区增多,并增加了由社会经济因素造成的水资源脆弱性。水安全风险随全球升温水平的升高而增加,在水安全脆弱地区表现更为显著。将全球升温限制在1.5℃可有效降低未来的水安全风险,有助于实现水安全、可持续发展和具有气候恢复力的发展三重目标。我国水安全问题突出,急需在“灰-绿”基础设施生态水文效应、三维水资源短缺、水-粮食-能源耦合、地球系统模拟器研发应用等方面重点开展研究工作。     

Climate Services for Water Resource Management in China: The Case Study of Danjiangkou Reservoir

The efficiencies and effectiveness of water resource management are inextricably linked to climate services. This study demonstrates a climate information service for Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is the largest artificial lake in Asia, facing mounting challenges for flood control, water storage, and water diversion. Unlike traditional water resource management on the basis of short-term weather forecast and runoff monitoring, subseasonal to seasonal(S2S)and annual climate predictions as well as long-term climate change projections were well used to support the decision makers in Danjiangkou Reservoir. The National Climate Center(NCC) has projected the changes of future climate and extreme events by dynamically downscaling the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5(CMIP5)projections to 25-km resolution for the long-term planning of water resource management in Danjiangkou Reservoir.Real-time climate predictions based on climate models and downscaling interpretation and application methods at different timescales were also provided to meet the specific needs of earlier predictions and spatial refinement for the short-term diversion of the reservoir. Our results show that such climate services facilitated the Diversion Center of Danjiangkou Reservoir(DCDR) to reasonably control the operational water level, increased the ecological water supply to the northern portion of China by 844 million m~3, and reduced as much as 1.67 billion m~3 of abandoned water in 2019. In the future, it is necessary to develop climate prediction methods to increase spatial and temporal resolutions and prediction skills, and enhance interactions between providers and users.     

Operationalizing climate targets under learning: An application of cost-risk analysis

Reviewing the existing studies of public perception and drawing analogies from other risk technologies, this paper explores the public positions on research and implementation of geoengineering as a means to combat climate change. Existing studies on geoengineering perceptions show low levels of awareness and a lack of knowledge. Hence, existing attitudes on geoengineering can be judged instable and stimulus-dependent. When judged in isolation, at least one third favors the use of geoengineering technologies preferring CDR over SRM technologies; when judged in comparison to other climate mitigation options, approval rates lose considerably support. Moreover, people seem to cautiously support research but oppose deployment while attitude formation depends on personal values and belief systems. The results of the empirical studies were fed into a Delphi workshop with experts for reflecting on the future development of public opinion and for designing a communication and public involvement process that corresponds to the empirical insights gained from the perception studies.     

Farmer beliefs and concerns about climate change and attitudes toward adaptation and mitigation: Evidence from Iowa

Agriculture is both vulnerable to climate change impacts and a significant source of greenhouse gases. Increasing agriculture’s resilience and reducing its contribution to climate change are societal priorities. Survey data collected from Iowa farmers are analyzed to answer the related research questions: (1) do farmers support adaptation and mitigation actions, and (2) do beliefs and concerns about climate change influence those attitudes. Results indicate that farmers who were concerned about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and attributed it to human activities had more positive attitudes toward both adaptive and mitigative management strategies. Farmers who believed that climate change is not a problem because human ingenuity will enable adaptations and who did not believe climate change is occurring or believed it is a natural phenomenon—a substantial percentage of farmers—tended not to support mitigation.     

Short-term distributional consequences of climate change impacts on the power sector: who gains and who loses?

Climate change tends to negatively affect the power sector, inter alia, by causing cooling problems in power plants and impairing the water supply required for hydropower generation. In the future, when global warming is expected to increase, autonomous adaptation to climate change via international electricity markets inducing reallocations of power generation may not be sufficient to prevent supply disruptions anymore. Furthermore, the consequent changes of supply patterns and electricity prices might cause an undesirable redistribution of wealth both between individual power suppliers and between suppliers and consumers. This study ascertains changes in European power supply patterns and electricity prices caused by on-going global warming as well as the associated redistribution of wealth for different climate change scenarios. The focus of the analysis is on short-term effects. Our results confirm that autonomous adaptation in the power sector should be complemented by planned public adaptation in order to preserve energy security and to prevent undesired distributional effects.     

丹江口库区气候变化及对生态环境的影响

利用库区水源地(南阳区域)跨越的4个县(市)1974~2003年的气候资料,分析了库区水源地近30年的气候变化特征,结果表明:库区水源地近年来年平均气温呈明显递增趋势,特别是近10年来气温增幅明显;降水的年际变化大,季节分布不均,近年来有秋雨增多、春旱频发的趋势,自1996年起,降水气候特点呈连续干旱和持续雨涝的变化特征;库区水源地北部山区降雨量偏多,南部、东南部及丘陵垄岗地区降水偏少,近10年来强降雨日数较前期增幅明显。这种气候变化趋势对水源地的水资源和自然生态环境造成了直接或潜在的影响,并可能继续产生明显影响。     

Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants and change over time

While scientific consensus and political and media messages appear to be increasingly certain, public attitudes and action towards the issue do not appear to be following suit. Popular and academic debate often assumes this is due to ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but some studies have suggested political beliefs and values may play a more important role in determining belief versus scepticism about climate change. The current research used two representative postal surveys of the UK public to: measure scepticism and uncertainty about climate change; determine how scepticism varies according to individual characteristics, knowledge and values; and examine how scepticism has changed over time. Findings show denial of climate change is less common than the perception that the issue has been exaggerated. Scepticism was found to be strongly determined by individuals’ environmental and political values (and indirectly by age, gender, location and lifestyle) rather than by education or knowledge. Between 2003 and 2008, public uncertainty about climate change has remained remarkably constant, although belief that claims about the issue are exaggerated has doubled over that period. These results are interpreted with reference to psychological concepts of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and ‘finite pool of worry’. Implications for communication and policy are discussed.