Dataset Information

Perception of climate change.

ABSTRACT: "Climate dice," describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons, have become more and more "loaded" in the past 30 y, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951-1980 base period. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth's surface during the base period, now typically covers about 10% of the land area. It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small. We discuss practical implications of this substantial, growing, climate change.

SUBMITTER: Hansen J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3443154 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Perception of climate change.

Hansen James J Sato Makiko M Ruedy Reto R

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20120806 37

"Climate dice," describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons, have become more and more "loaded" in the past 30 y, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951-1980 base period. This hot ex ...[more]

PMID: 22869707

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Project description:Despite the scientific consensus, some people still remain skeptical about climate change. In fact, there is a growing partisan divide over the last decade within the United States in the support for climate policies. Given the same climate evidence, why do some people become concerned while others remain unconvinced? Here we propose a motivated attention framework where socio-political motivations shape visual attention to climate evidence, altering perceptions of the evidence and subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. To seek support for this framework, we conducted three experiments. Participants viewed a graph of annual global temperature change while they were eyetracked and estimated the average change. We found that political orientation may bias attention to climate change evidence, altering the perception of the same evidence (Experiment 1). We further examined how attentional biases influence subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. We found that liberals were more likely to sign a climate petition or more willing to donate to an environmental organization than conservatives, and attention guides climate actions in different ways for liberals and conservatives (Experiment 2). To seek causal evidence, we biased attention to different parts of the temperature curve by coloring stronger climate evidence in red or weak climate evidence in red. We found that liberals were more likely to sign the petition or more willing to donate when stronger evidence was in red, but conservatives were less likely to act when stronger evidence was in red (Experiment 3). This suggests that drawing attention to motivationally consistent information increases actions in liberals, but discouraged conservatives. The findings provide initial preliminary evidence for the motivated attention framework, suggesting an attentional divide between liberals and conservatives in the perception of climate evidence. This divide might further reinforce prior beliefs about climate change, creating further polarization. The current study raises a possible attentional mechanism for ideologically motivated reasoning and its impact on basic perceptual processes. It also provides implications for the communication of climate science to different socio-political groups with the goal of mobilizing actions on climate change.

Project description:BackgroundUnderstanding public perceptions of climate change and how individuals perceive it is critical to developing effective communication strategies, policies, and socially robust technologies to relieve the risks of climate change. Despite the growing literature on climate change, until now, researchers in Arab countries have not been interested in studying citizens' perceptions of climate change or identifying the factors that predict it. This study aimed to identify and understand the nature and dynamics of public perceptions of climate change among Arab citizens and detect the level of climate change perception (CCP) and climate values (CV). Also, to detect the predictability of CCP from CV. As well as to reveal the differences between CCP and CV.MethodsA random sample consisted of 465 participants (236 male and 229 female), residents of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; their ages ranged from 30 years and over. The Climate Change Perception Questionnaire (CCPQ) and Climate Values Questionnaire (CVQ) were applied online.ResultsThe results found average levels of CCP and CV among the study sample. The results also revealed significant statistical differences in the CCP and CV due to gender in favor of females. As well as, there were significant statistical differences in the CCP due to the career field in favor of agriculture, engineering, and construction workers. Also, there were statistical differences in the emotional subscale of climate perception and CV due to age groups in favor of individuals whose ages ranged from 30 to 45 years. The results also found that the CV were a statistically significant predictor (1.2% of total variance) of climate perception.ConclusionThe current study showed an average level of CCP and CV among individuals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabian. The findings also concluded that individuals' perceptions of climate change are an individual response determined by the individual's gender, age, and career field and are affected by his values about climate. These findings shed light on the need for climate communications to increase the level of CCP and CV, especially among males and individuals in the age group over 45 years and individuals working in various career fields, whether education, engineering and construction, and commerce and business, etc.; to improve the engagement in mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change.

Dataset Information

Perception of climate change.

Publications

Perception of climate change.

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