How Will Climate Change Shape Climate Opinion?

As climate change intensifies, global publics will experience more unusual weather and extreme weather events. How will individual experiences with these weather trends shape climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? In this article, we review 73 papers that have studied the relationship between climate change experiences and public opinion. Overall, we find mixed evidence that weather shapes climate opinions. Although there is some support for a weak effect of local temperature and extreme weather events on climate opinion, the heterogeneity of independent variables, dependent variables, study populations, and research designs complicate systematic comparison. To advance research on this critical topic, we suggest that future studies pay careful attention to differences between self-reported and objective weather data, causal identification, and the presence of spatial autocorrelation in weather and climate data. Refining research designs and methods in future studies will help us understand the discrepancies in results, and allow better detection of effects, which have important practical implications for climate communication. As the global population increasingly experiences weather conditions outside the range of historical experience, researchers, communicators, and policymakers need to understand how these experiences shape-and are shaped by-public opinions and behaviors

Evaluering av sammenheng mellom tiltak

While climate scientists have developed high resolution data sets on the distribution of climate risks, we still lack comparable data on the local distribution of public climate change opinions. This paper provides the first effort to estimate local climate and energy opinion variability outside the United States. Using a multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) approach, we estimate opinion in federal electoral districts and provinces. We demonstrate that a majority of the Canadian public consistently believes that climate change is happening. Belief in climate change's causes varies geographically, with more people attributing it to human activity in urban as opposed to rural areas. Most prominently, we find majority support for carbon cap and trade policy in every province and district. By contrast, support for carbon taxation is more heterogeneous. Compared to the distribution of US climate opinions, Canadians believe climate change is happening at higher levels. This new opinion data set will support climate policy analysis and climate policy decision making at national, provincial and local levels

What do Republicans and Democrats think about climate change? It depends on where they live

As with most political issues, neither Republicans nor Democrats are completely against or in favor of action to tackle climate change. In new research Matto Mildenberger, Peter Howe, Jennifer Marlon, and Anthony Leiserowitz investigate how support for climate action varies from state to state for both party's supporters. They find that the belief that global warming is happening as well as support for particular climate mitigation policies varies widely across both states and congressional districts. Many Republicans, for example, believe that global warming is happening, but not that it is human-caused. Such contradictory beliefs, however, do not seem to affect Republicans’ support for funding research on renewables or even the regulation of carbon pollution

N-3 PUFAs induce inflammatory tolerance by formation of KEAP1-containing SQSTM1/p62-bodies and activation of NFE2L2

Inflammation is crucial in the defense against infections but must be tightly controlled to limit detrimental hyperactivation. Our diet influences inflammatory processes and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have known anti-inflammatory effects. The balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory processes is coordinated by macrophages and macroautophagy/autophagy has recently emerged as a cellular process that dampens inflammation. Here we report that the n-3 PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) transiently induces cytosolic speckles of the autophagic receptor SQSTM1/p62 (sequestosome 1) (described as SQSTM1/p62-bodies) in macrophages. We suggest that the formation of SQSTM1/p62-bodies represents a fast mechanism of NFE2L2/Nrf2 (nuclear factor, erythroid 2 like 2) activation by recruitment of KEAP1 (kelch like ECH associated protein 1). Further, the autophagy receptor TAX1BP1 (Tax1 binding protein 1) and ubiquitin-editing enzyme TNFAIP3/A20 (TNF α induced protein 3) could be identified in DHA-induced SQSTM1/p62-bodies. Simultaneously, DHA strongly dampened the induction of pro-inflammatory genes including CXCL10 (C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 10) and we suggest that formation of SQSTM1/p62-bodies and activation of NFE2L2 leads to tolerance towards selective inflammatory stimuli. Finally, reduced CXCL10 levels were related to the improved clinical outcome in n-3 PUFA-supplemented heart-transplant patients and we propose CXCL10 as a robust marker for the clinical benefits mobilized by n-3 PUFA supplementation

The Interplay of Oxidative Stress Responses and Autophagy in Inflammation

To assure homeostasis, cells have to continuously adapt to exogenous and endogenous threats. This is achieved by response mechanisms like the oxidative stress response, autophagy and inflammation. The oxidative stress response limits the level of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS), while autophagy removes and recycles damaged proteins. Both processes modulate inflammation, which is essential for cellular defense but also a cause of harm. Exaggerated or insufficient activity of these processes leads to pathologic changes. It is acknowledged that impairment of the maintenance systems and accumulation of damage leads to pathologic changes. The appropriate targeting of cellular maintenance mechanisms could be beneficial for a broad range of pathologies, but demands an in-depth knowledge of endogenous responses. The objective of this work was to study the complex interaction of autophagy, oxidative stress and inflammation and their modulation in disease prevention and infection therapy. Age-related neurodegenerative diseases are often characterized by the accumulation of protein aggregates, likely as a result of declining clearance mechanisms. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common cause of blindness in elderly and associated with aggregate deposits in areas where retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and consequently photoreceptors are lost. The cells ability to cope with stress can be influenced by the diet. Omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) have shown beneficial effects on AMD, however, the mechanisms are not understood. We here describe the transient increase of protein aggregation, autophagy and activation of the oxidative stress response by the n-3 PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Knockdown of the autophagy receptor SQSTM1 (sequestosome 1), the essential autophagy gene ATG5 (autophagy-related 5) or the regulator of the anti-oxidative response NFE2L2 (nuclear factor, erythroid 2 like 2) resulted in limited cell proliferation during treatment with DHA. Finally, DHA protected RPE cells from cell cycle arrest induced by misfolded proteins or exogenous oxidative stress. Underlying low grade inflammation contributes to the most common diseases in Western countries and n-3 PUFAs are acknowledged to have anti-inflammatory effects. We investigated if the increase of protein aggregation, autophagy and activation of the oxidative stress response that we had seen in RPE cells, contributes to anti-inflammatory effects of n-3 PUFAs. Our results indicate that n-3 PUFA treatment in macrophages mediated polymerization of the autophagy receptor SQSTM1 (sequestosome 1) and recruitment of KEAP1 (kelch-like ECH associated protein 1), which is the repressor of NFE2L2, as a fast mechanism to activate the anti-oxidative response. Simultaneously, DHA strongly limited IFN (interferon)-dependent signaling. We further show decreased levels of the IFN-stimulated chemokine CXCL10 (C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 10) in n-3 PUFA supplemented patients with chronic inflammation and suggest CXCL10 as a valuable marker for beneficial effects of n-3 PUFAs in inflammation-related diseases. Responses that protect the host from tissue damage can favor pathogens and dampen the defense against infections. ROS are produced during the uptake of bacteria by immune cells (phagocytosis). ROS represent an important part of defense, while the NFE2L2 -KEAP1 system regulates oxidative stress and limits ROS production. We investigated the role of the ROS sensor KEAP1 in mycobacterial infection. ROS production during phagocytosis recruited KEAP1. Knockdown of KEAP1 in Mycobacterium avium infected cells increased expression of cytokines and type I IFNs and augmented nuclear translocation of upstream transcription factors. Our results indicate that the KEAP1-ubiquitin ligase complex ubiquitinates the signaling protein IKK β (I kappa kinase beta) and marks it for degradation. The down-regulated inflammation resulted in increased intracellular growth and survival of M. avium in human macrophages

Replication Data for: Quota Sampling Using Facebook Advertisements

Researchers in different social science disciplines have successfully used Facebook to recruit subjects for their studies. However, such convenience samples are not generally representative of the population. We develop and validate a new quota sampling method to recruit respondents using Facebook advertisements, and publish an R package to semi-automate this quota sampling process using the Facebook Marketing API. To test the method, we used Facebook advertisements to quota sample 2432 U.S. respondents for a survey on climate change public opinion. We conducted a contemporaneous nationally representative survey asking identical questions using a high-quality online survey panel whose respondents were recruited using probability sampling. Many results from the Facebook-sampled survey are similar to those from the online panel survey; furthermore, results from the Facebook-sampled survey approximate results from the American Community Survey (ACS) for a set of validation questions. These findings suggest that using Facebook to recruit respondents is a viable option for survey researchers wishing to approximate population-level public opinion

Climate change opinions over time (COOT)

Dataset for the paper Change in US state-level public opinion about climate change: 2008–2020, published in Environmental Research Letters (2022