Weather, climate, and the economy: Explaining risk perceptions of global warming, 2001-10

Abstract Two series of national survey datasets (2001-10), supplemented with monthly temperature and precipitation data and unemployment data, are used to examine how weather and climate, economic performance, and individuals\u27 sociodemographic backgrounds and political orientations affect public perceptions of global warming. Consistent with previous studies, political orientations play a key rolein determining public perceptions of global warming. Democrats and liberals are more likely than Republicans and conservatives to see global warming as an immediate and serious problem. Sociodemographic characteristics are also shown to be significant factors, with young people, women, and racial minorities likely to show higher concern about global warming than their counterparts. Moreover, individuals with lower income and higher levels of education tend to be more concerned about global warming. Net of these factors, summer temperature trends over the past 10 years, among other weather and climate measures, are shown to have consistently positive effects on public perceptions of global warming. This suggests that individuals who have experienced increasing summer heat are most likely to perceive immediate impacts and severity of global warming. Surprisingly, macroeconomic conditions - represented by the unemployment rate at the county level - do not appear to influence public perceptions of global warming

Are philosophers responsible for global warming?

Global warming has come about as a result of rapid population increase plus our whole modern way of life, all made possible by modern science. In order to tackle global warming successfully, we need a new kind of inquiry that gives intellectual priority to tackling problems of living over problems of knowledge. If we had had this new kind of inquiry fifty years ago, we might have begun to do something about global warming long ago, in the early 1960s, when Keeling first discovered that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere. Our long-standing failure to respond to global warming is in part due to our failure to develop a genuinely rigorous kind of inquiry devoted to helping us tackle our global problems, which is, in turn, a philosophical failure. Philosophers are responsible for global warming to the extent that they have failed to highlight this philosophical blunder inherent in academia in part responsible for our tardy response to global warming

Cooling Global Warming Through Transit

For generations, cars have been cool because they are perceived to correlate to independence and wealth. People’s attachment to their cars is one of the most cited examples of why government doesn’t want to invest in mass transit. Accompanying this ideology is an underlying fear and distaste for buses. Recently, Cleveland purposely avoided such a stigma in naming its new bus line “The Health Line” and referring to it always as rapid transit. Yet, providing “cool” features to buses, like making them hybrid or dressing them up like quaint trolleys, has been largely unsuccessful in overhauling the image of buses. Buses aren’t cool. Yet

Science, scientists, and local weather: Understanding mass perceptions of global warming

Objective: To explore the effects of long-term climate trends and short-term weather fluctuations, evaluations of scientists and science, political predispositions, religious affiliation, the information environment, and demographic attributes on individuals’ views about whether global warming exists and, if so, whether it is a result of natural cycles or human activity. Methods: We use data from the 2009 Pew General Public Science Survey, along with data on long- and short-term patterns of temperature and precipitation in individuals’ home communities. Results: We find that long-term trends in summer temperatures influence perceptions of global warming. Individuals who reside in communities with long-term warming of summer temperatures that are coupled with long-term cooling of spring temperatures are significantly more likely to perceive that global warming exists and is due to human activity. We also find that Americans\u27 attitudes toward scientists and science, political dispositions, evangelical religious affiliation, education, and some demographic attributes all have discernible effects on their perceptions of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Conclusion: Individuals’ attitudes toward global warming are influenced by long-term temperature trends in their home communities, as well as a variety of attitudinal and demographic attributes

The Big Burp: A Bad Day in the Paleocene

This lesson focuses on global warming and a possible connection with the Paleocene extinction event. Students will explore how a global warming episode associated with the release of methane from methane hydrate deposits could have been responsible for the Paleocene extinction event 55 million years ago. They will be able to describe the overall events that occurred during the Paleocene extinction event, describe the processes that are believed to result in global warming, and infer how a global warming episode could have contributed to the Paleocene extinction event. Educational levels: Intermediate elementary, Middle school