Climate change discourses in use by the UK public: commonalities and variations over a fifteen year period

The ways in which climate change is understood by members of the UK public, are considered across a fifteen year period spanning 1997-2011. Qualitative datasets from six separate projects are analysed to trace commonalities and variation over time in the conceptualisation of climate change as a physical, social and personal phenomenon. Ways of understanding are presented as a series of discourses. These relate to people’s appraisal of climate science, the apprehension of climate change through informal evidence, and how climate is seen in relation to natural systems; as well as the means by which climate change is contextualised to social systems, to cultural and historical conditions, and with respect to daily life. Climate discourses across all domains are found to be relatively stable over time, though with subtle shifts in meaning and emphasis. Emergent trends include recent evidence of climate ‘fatigue’ and an increased tendency to question the anthropogenic component to climate change, but also the view that action on climate change has become normalised in recent years. Survey data are also used to explore the prevalence of identified ways of understanding, and to examine longitudinal changes in these. There is some evidence of decline in climate change concern and increase in scepticism over the past decade, though these trends are not pronounced. Cold weather events from 2009/2010 are interpreted by people as evidence of the veracity of climate change (more so than as disconfirming it). Cultural worldviews are found to underlie perceptions. Findings are interpreted in the context of cultural theoretical and discursive frameworks. These present the opportunity to explain the recurrent, patterned and socially-shared nature of public perspectives, and the ways in which these are used both to understand climate change and to account for the actions of oneself and others. The development of combined secondary and longitudinal qualitative analytic techniques is a central methodological concern of the thesis. The advantages and drawbacks, practicalities, and epistemological considerations of such an approach, are outlined in detail

Public perceptions of climate change in Wales: Summary findings of a survey of the Welsh public conducted during November and December 2012

Climate change presents a formidable challenge to societies across the globe. The infrastructure, economy, natural environment, and health and wellbeing of people in Wales are each expected to be affected by climate change in the coming years. In its policies, the Welsh Government has asserted its commitment to urgent and sustained action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Whilst the case for action on mitigation remains, there is also a clear need to develop effective adaptation approaches in anticipation of consequences, which have become unavoidable in Wales and elsewhere. However, mitigation and adaptation efforts are unlikely to be fully effective without significant awareness, engagement and buy-in from the population of Wales as a whole. This report examines public perceptions of climate change in Wales at the end of the year 2012, using a nationally representative survey (n=1,001) of the Welsh public. The main aims of the survey were to examine people’s views regarding the reality of and human contribution to climate change, their concerns about the impacts of climate change, perspectives on climate change adaptation, and attitudes towards policy and behaviour change. As this survey was conducted at the end of a year when Wales experienced serious levels of high rainfall and associated flooding, the link between people’s experience of flooding and climate change perceptions is also explored, including by the use of an additional oversample in a heavily affected part of Wales (n=100)

Stability and change in British public discourses about climate change between 1997 and 2010

Public understanding of climate change has been a topic of environmental social sciences research since the early 1990s. To date, temporal change in climate change understanding has been approached almost exclusively using quantitative, survey-based methodologies, which indicate that people's responses on a limited number of measures have indeed altered in response to changing circumstances. However, quantitative longitudinal evidence can be criticised for presenting an overly simplistic view of people's beliefs and values. The current study is the first to explore changes in public understanding over an extended time period using in-depth qualitative methods. The study utilises a novel longitudinal methodology to explore changes in discourses across six separate datasets collected over the period 1997-2010, comprising a total of 208 public participants from across Great Britain. We find for the first time that discourses regarding the relevance of climate change to everyday life, and concerning rationales for personal action have exhibited subtle but important shifts over this period. By contrast, other aspects of public understanding have exhibited considerable stability over time, particularly with respect to ethical principles concerning stewardship of nature, justice and fairness. We conclude by distinguishing between three scales of change in public understanding of climate change: relatively short-lived movements in attitudes as revealed by survey data and influenced by transitory phenomena; slower shifts in public discourses that track changing cultural contexts; and enduring ways of understanding climate change that are tied to longer-term ethical foundations

Social identity and risk perception explain participation in the Swiss youth climate strikes

Since late 2018, young people around the world have united to demand greater action on climate change. Aside from their stated concerns and demands, however, very little is known about why young people have been joining this growing movement. Using a large sample (N = 4057) of people in Switzerland aged between 14 and 25, we show that social identity is most strongly associated with participation, followed by beliefs about the effectiveness of youth strikes, level of education, and worry about climate change. Our findings affirm the relevance of both climate change risk perceptions and social identity-related processes for collective climate change action, and pave the way for promising opportunities in theory development and integration. The study also provides lessons for those who seek to maintain and increase collective action on climate change: concern about climate change is an important motivating factor, but social identity processes are at least as relevant for young people’s participation

Uncertain climate: An investigation into public scepticism about anthropogenic climate change

This study presents a detailed investigation of public scepticism about climate change in Britain using the trend, attribution, and impact scepticism framework of Rahmstorf (2004). The study found that climate scepticism is currently not widespread in Britain. Although uncertainty and scepticism about the potential impacts of climate change were fairly common, both trend and attribution scepticism were far less prevalent. It further showed that the different types of scepticism are strongly interrelated. Although this may suggest that the general public does not clearly distinguish between the different aspects of the climate debate, there is a clear gradation in prevalence along the Rahmstorf typology. Climate scepticism appeared particularly common among older individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are politically conservative and hold traditional values; while it is less common among younger individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds who hold self-transcendence and environmental values. The finding that climate scepticism is rooted in people's core values and worldviews may imply a coherent and encompassing sceptical outlook on climate change. However, attitudinal certainty appeared mainly concentrated in non-sceptical groups, suggesting that climate sceptical views are not held very firmly. Implications of the findings for climate change communication and engagement are discussed

Public understanding in Great Britain of ocean acidification

Public engagement with climate change is critical for maintaining the impetus for meaningful emissions cuts. Ocean acidification (OA) is increasingly recognized by marine scientists as an important, but often overlooked, consequence of anthropogenic emissions1, 2. Although substantial evidence now exists concerning people’s understanding of climate change more generally3, very little is known about public perceptions of OA. Here, for the first time, we characterize in detail people’s understanding of this topic using survey data obtained in Great Britain (n = 2,501) during 2013 and 2014. We draw on theories of risk perception and consider how personal values influence attitudes towards OA. We find that public awareness of OA is very low compared to that of climate change, and was unaffected by the publication of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Using an experimental approach, we show that providing basic information can heighten concern about OA, however, we find that attitude polarization along value-based lines may occur if the topic is explicitly associated with climate change. We discuss the implications of our findings for public engagement with OA, and the importance of learning lessons from communications research relating to climate change

Operator Approach to Isospin Violation in Pion Photoproduction

Unambiguous isospin violation in the strong interaction sector is a key issue in low energy hadronic physics, both experimentally and theoretically. Bernstein has employed the Fermi-Watson theorem to demonstrate that pion photoproduction is a process where isospin violation in the pi N system can be revealed, an approach we review here. Here we propose a general operator approach to the phenomenon in pion photoproduction, thereby providing an analogue for the framework that was proposed for pi N scattering by Kaufmann and Gibbs. The resulting set of amplitudes could form the basis for determining the multipole amplitudes for photoproduction. Thus, the so resulting phase shift determination from photoproduction can then be used via the Fermi-Watson theorem to resolve discrepancies in pi N phase shift analyses. We point out that casting effective Lagrangian results in terms of our framework would be beneficial. The upcoming polarization experiments are an ideal setting to test our approach, and also to constrain better the isotensor currents which strictly are not forbidden.Comment: 14 pages, latex, to appear in Physics Letters