IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v6y2016i4p2158244016676296.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Awareness of the Scientific Consensus on Climate

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence C. Hamilton

Abstract

Questions about climate change elicit some of the widest political divisions of any items on recent U.S. surveys. Severe polarization affects even basic questions about the reality of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), or whether most scientists agree that humans are changing the 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 10 points over 2010 to 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, whereas the liberal–conservative gap regarding existence of a scientific consensus narrowed.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence C. Hamilton, 2016. "Public Awareness of the Scientific Consensus on Climate," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(4), pages 21582440166, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:6:y:2016:i:4:p:2158244016676296
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244016676296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244016676296
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244016676296?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence C. Hamilton & Joel Hartter & Kei Saito, 2015. "Trust in Scientists on Climate Change and Vaccines," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(3), pages 21582440156, August.
    2. Robert Brulle & Jason Carmichael & J. Jenkins, 2012. "Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002–2010," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 169-188, September.
    3. Charles S. Taber & Milton Lodge, 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(3), pages 755-769, July.
    4. Adam Corner & Lorraine Whitmarsh & Dimitrios Xenias, 2012. "Uncertainty, scepticism and attitudes towards climate change: biased assimilation and attitude polarisation," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 463-478, October.
    5. Sander Linden & Anthony Leiserowitz & Geoffrey Feinberg & Edward Maibach, 2014. "How to communicate the scientific consensus on climate change: plain facts, pie charts or metaphors?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 255-262, September.
    6. Aaron McCright & Riley Dunlap & Chenyang Xiao, 2013. "Perceived scientific agreement and support for government action on climate change in the USA," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 119(2), pages 511-518, July.
    7. Stephan Lewandowsky & Gilles E. Gignac & Samuel Vaughan, 2013. "The pivotal role of perceived scientific consensus in acceptance of science," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 399-404, April.
    8. Michael N. Mitchell, 2012. "A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics, 3rd Edition," Stata Press books, StataCorp LP, number vgsg, March.
    9. Lawrence Hamilton, 2011. "Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 231-242, January.
    10. B. Dan Wood & Arnold Vedlitz, 2007. "Issue Definition, Information Processing, and the Politics of Global Warming," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 552-568, July.
    11. Dan M. Kahan & Hank Jenkins-Smith & Donald Braman, 2011. "Cultural cognition of scientific consensus," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 147-174, February.
    12. Sander L van der Linden & Anthony A Leiserowitz & Geoffrey D Feinberg & Edward W Maibach, 2015. "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change as a Gateway Belief: Experimental Evidence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-8, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roberta Weiner & Sarah P. Church & Junyu Lu & Laura A. Esman & Jackie M. Getson & Michelle Fleckenstein & Brennan Radulski & Pranay Ranjan & Emily Usher & Linda S. Prokopy & Linda Pfeiffer, 2021. "Climate change coverage in the United States media during the 2017 hurricane season: implications for climate change communication," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-19, February.
    2. E. Keith Smith & Adam Mayer, 2019. "Anomalous Anglophones? Contours of free market ideology, political polarization, and climate change attitudes in English-speaking countries, Western European and post-Communist states," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 17-34, January.
    3. Adriana AnaMaria Davidescu & Simona-Andreea Apostu & Andreea Paul, 2020. "Exploring Citizens’ Actions in Mitigating Climate Change and Moving toward Urban Circular Economy. A Multilevel Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-46, September.
    4. Richard S.J. Tol, 2019. "The elusive consensus on climate change," Working Paper Series 0319, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    5. Austin Hegland & Annie Li Zhang & Brianna Zichettella & Josh Pasek, 2022. "A Partisan Pandemic: How COVID-19 Was Primed for Polarization," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 700(1), pages 55-72, March.
    6. Schallehn, Frauke & Valogianni, Konstantina, 2022. "Sustainability awareness and smart meter privacy concerns: The cases of US and Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lawrence C. Hamilton, 2018. "Self-assessed understanding of climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 349-362, November.
    2. Toby Bolsen & James N. Druckman & Fay Lomax Cook, 2015. "Citizens’, Scientists’, and Policy Advisors’ Beliefs about Global Warming," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 658(1), pages 271-295, March.
    3. Sander L van der Linden & Anthony A Leiserowitz & Geoffrey D Feinberg & Edward W Maibach, 2015. "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change as a Gateway Belief: Experimental Evidence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-8, February.
    4. Carisa Bergner & Bruce A. Desmarais & John Hird, 2019. "Speaking truth in power: Scientific evidence as motivation for policy activism," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(1).
    5. Jessica E. Hughes & James D. Sauer & Aaron Drummond & Laura E. Brumby & Matthew A. Palmer, 2023. "Endorsement of scientific inquiry promotes better evaluation of climate policy evidence," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(6), pages 1-20, June.
    6. Sacha Altay & Marlène Schwartz & Anne-Sophie Hacquin & Aurélien Allard & Stefaan Blancke & Hugo Mercier, 2022. "Scaling up interactive argumentation by providing counterarguments with a chatbot," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(4), pages 579-592, April.
    7. Lucia Savadori & Giuseppe Espa & Maria Michela Dickson, 2020. "The polarizing impact of numeracy, economic literacy, and science literacy on attitudes toward immigration," Papers 2011.02362, arXiv.org.
    8. Karine Lacroix & Robert Gifford & Jonathan Rush, 2020. "Climate change beliefs shape the interpretation of forest fire events," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 103-120, March.
    9. Jeremiah Bohr, 2017. "Is it hot in here or is it just me? Temperature anomalies and political polarization over global warming in the American public," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 271-285, May.
    10. Baiardi, Donatella & Morana, Claudio, 2021. "Climate change awareness: Empirical evidence for the European Union," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    11. Tatyana Deryugina & Olga Shurchkov, 2016. "The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-14, April.
    12. Ting Liu & Nick Shryane & Mark Elliot, 2022. "Attitudes to climate change risk: classification of and transitions in the UK population between 2012 and 2020," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Sander Linden & Anthony Leiserowitz & Geoffrey Feinberg & Edward Maibach, 2014. "How to communicate the scientific consensus on climate change: plain facts, pie charts or metaphors?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 255-262, September.
    14. Salil D. Benegal & Lyle A. Scruggs, 2018. "Correcting misinformation about climate change: the impact of partisanship in an experimental setting," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 61-80, May.
    15. Bojana Većkalov & Sandra J. Geiger & František Bartoš & Mathew P. White & Bastiaan T. Rutjens & Frenk Harreveld & Federica Stablum & Berkan Akın & Alaa Aldoh & Jinhao Bai & Frida Berglund & Aleša Brat, 2024. "A 27-country test of communicating the scientific consensus on climate change," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 8(10), pages 1892-1905, October.
    16. Su, Siyan, 2022. "Updating politicized beliefs: How motivated reasoning contributes to polarization," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    17. Shapiro, Matthew A., 2020. "Next-generation battery research and development: Non-politicized science at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Debra Javeline & Tracy Kijewski-Correa & Angela Chesler, 2019. "Does it matter if you “believe” in climate change? Not for coastal home vulnerability," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 511-532, August.
    19. Linda M. Fogg & Lawrence C. Hamilton & Erin S. Bell, 2020. "Views of the Highway: Infrastructure Reality, Perceptions, and Politics," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    20. Lawrence Hamilton, 2015. "What people know," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 5(1), pages 54-57, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:6:y:2016:i:4:p:2158244016676296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.