URI researcher: Weather fluctuations cause people to seek information on climate change
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Results vary by political ideology, education levels
KINGSTON, R.I. – July 16, 2014 – A University of Rhode Island researcher analyzed Internet search trends and weather patterns and has concluded that people across the United States seek information about climate change when they experience unusual or severe weather events in their area. But findings differed based on political ideology and education levels.
“When local weather conditions are consistent with the predictions of climate change – above average heat, drought or warmer winters, for instance – then people go online and type in ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ to learn more,” said Corey Lang, URI assistant professor of environmental economics. “It’s a confirmation that people are connecting weather anomalies to climate change.”
His results will be published this week in the journal Climatic Change.
Lang used Google Trends to collect data on how often people in 205 media markets searched the Internet for terms like “climate change” and “global warming” from January 2004 to May 2013. While search activity increased during weather fluctuations consistent with climate change predictions, it also increased in some areas during weather events inconsistent with climate science.
“One possibility is that when weather is inconsistent with climate change, climate science deniers go online in higher numbers seeking to confirm their prior beliefs,” Lang said. “It’s also possible that weather anomalies of any kind spark people to think about weather and climate. We can only speculate about their reasons.”
When Lang compared search data in regions of the country with differing political views and education levels, his results suggest that some groups may see climate change differently. For example, Democratic leaning regions and those with higher education levels were more likely to seek information about climate change when average summer temperatures were above normal, whereas those in Republican and less educated areas sought climate change information when they experienced extreme heat.
“When it’s just a warmer than usual month, more Democratic and well educated areas are picking up on that signal, but it’s a spike in temperature over one or more days that Republican and less-educated areas are keying in to climate change,” Lang said. “It may suggest that different types of people have different perceptions of what kind of weather defines climate change.”
The URI economist said that it is difficult to draw sweeping conclusions based solely on Internet search data, since it is impossible to know the motivations of individuals conducting the searches. But he said it is a good sign that people from across the geographic, political and education spectrums are making the connection between weather fluctuations and climate change and are seeking more information about it.
“There isn’t this intransigence that is often played up,” he said. “It’s much more dynamic.”
The next step in Lang’s research is to learn what happens after people search for information on climate change.
“There are a lot of open questions about what these results mean,” he said. “What are people doing with this information? Are they purchasing energy efficient appliances? Are they taking measures to improve their situation in the face of the changing climate? Self-motivated information seeking is a good first step, but what do they do next?”
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From Springerlink:
What do Google searches tell us about our climate change fears?
Political ideology, education levels affect when people search for climate information
Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from a study by Corey Lang of the University of Rhode Island in the US, published in Springer’s journal Climatic Change.
He tracked how the temperature fluctuations and rainfall that Americans experience daily in their own cities make them scour the Internet in search of information about climate change and global warming. To do so, he used data from Google Trends, local weather stations and election results.
Google Trends aggregates all Google searches that are made, and measures how popular a specific search term is. Users can fine tune this to be specific to a particular place (such as a country or city) and time (such as monthly or on a specific date). Lang specifically checked how often, when and where citizens in 205 cities in the US used the search terms “global warming,” “climate change” and “weather.” The terms “drought” and “flood” were also included because increases in these natural phenomena are important predicted impacts of climate change. Monthly statistics were collected for the period from January 2004 to May 2013. Lang then matched them with local weather station data, as well as the 2008 presidential election results in Dave Leip’s “Atlas of Presidential Elections.”
Lang found that search activity increased when extreme heat was felt in summer, when no rain fell over extended periods, and when there were fewer extreme cold snaps in winter. Such weather fluctuations are consistent with projected climate change. Interestingly though, searches also increased when average winter and spring temperatures dropped – events that are inconsistent with global warming. Lang believes this could mean that people who observe unusual extreme weather conditions are genuinely interested in learning more about climate change. It could, however, also mean that deniers, who experience an unusually cool winter, go online to confirm their skeptical views that the world is not really growing warmer.
People from varying political and educational backgrounds reach for their devices at different times to check out information on climate change. Republicans and people from less educated areas do more relevant searches during periods of extreme temperatures, while Democrats and residents of well-educated areas do so when they experience changes in average temperatures.
“Weather fluctuations have an impact on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the impacts of climate change. And the research suggests that different types of people experience weather differently or have different perceptions about what type of weather defines climate change, ” concludes Lang.
Reference: Lang, C. (2014). Do Weather Fluctuations Cause People to Seek Information about Climate Change? Climatic Change. DOI 10.1007/s10584
You really need to suspend the rules for an article once in a while, so we can all tell people like lang that they are *%$(*)N UB&R*YGHI&^R^&hn8pt7t58h9p94968y9%()^BIGUyt……….
…Forgot the ‘!’
I don’t recall there being a tick box asking whether or not I am a Republican or a Democrat before I do every Google search.
“The ancients blamed it on the gods. Today’s alarmists blame it on humans.”
No. The ancients always blamed humans for climate disasters. They simply attributed them to the Gods as a reaction to whatever human action they could think of (sometimes politically motivated). I.e.” Earthquakes are a message from Baal to stop eating meat.” (I just made that up. You can interchange any god and any disaster and any human action.)
The belief in CAGW is simply a continuation of such a practice into the modern world. A practice that seems to be written in our genes, apparently.
“Climate Science Deniers”
This could be possible if only so called Climate Scientists weren’t wrong.
If only they produced a model that was accurate 90% of the time then we would stop questioning their results.
They have yet to show any model with that sort of accuracy and refuse to acknowledge that their proxy data is flawed (whether intentional or not) so how can this be termed “Climate Science”
Science: Root Latin Scio verb to know
If they KNOW what the weather will be in 50 years, why can’t they tell us what it will be next year or 3 months from now?
The answer is that they can’t. YET. The models need refinement and there needs to be more data points.
They as yet don’t understand fully how the climate works on Earth nor the interaction with the Sun. It’s a very complex system that may not be able to be fully predictable.
When they stop lying, I’ll stop disbelieving.
“Democratic leaning regions and those with higher education levels were more likely to seek…”
Strange he forgot to put the rich, the affluent in same phrase. I wonder why…
Both articles, and the faux study underlying them, are more of the ignorance best exemplified by the President’s position on climate.
That paper is an “F”ail
I think you will find that given reality continues to depart from the ‘models ‘ the days of ‘weather is not climate’ had long gone and now ever y extreme , but not usual , weather events is jumped on has ‘proof’ of AGW
Ah, propagandists such as Lenin & Goebels would be oh so proud of their little prodigies! Sadly like them both, this guy is oh so predictable!
It rather reminds me of hacking politicians here in the PDRofEU/UK, when somebody raises the issue of an elephant in a room, they pounce upon them with phrases like,…..”We understand the point Mr X was trying to make, but we felt his use of language was inappropriate!” The inference being that Mr X was a failure because he only managed to “try”, & that his language was “offensive”/”racist”/”nasty”/”hurtful”, take your pick from a whole range! The greenalists do it all the time here!
how in hell does someone manage to get complete and utter shite like that published. it is quite obvious mr lang did not receive an education,but an indoctrination .
Here’s what I got from the first article: Republicans=less educated, Democrats=higher educated. If education=indoctrination then maybe that’s true.
Lang biases are evident and clearly comprise the credibility of the analysis.
That said, I haven’t heard much about extreme weather lately. Am I out of the loop or has the weather too turn into one of those “deniers” Lang’s barking about?
“Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures.”
How exactly are people able tell when average temperature in an area changes? How do you go about ‘experiencing’ an average temperature change, how much does the average temperature have to change before Democrats can tell it has changed and over what period are their senses calculating the ‘average’ temperature? Do their bodies tell them the average temperature has changed or do they get that info from the local Democrat political offices?
I stopped reading after this statement. It makes 0 sense.
Those who exalt themselves, shall be humbled. One of the reasons it is so easy to harpoon liberals is they THINK they are smart. I guess their mommies always told them they were special. What they failed to realize is that “Special Ed” in the US is not about the talented and gifted.
Dat researcher forgot dat we less eduqated republicuns are also inbred gun owners. Dat means we less eduqated gun ownen inbred republicuns get on dat interweb to confirm our d’nile of climate change when it git hot out.
Words fail me
What about libertarians? Independents? other alternative parties? Do they ask to many questions as well?
I half expect to wake up one day and check this site and see a completely serious “study” confirming the real problem with so called skeptics is they are arrogant, and believe their opinion is relevant. They simply have a problem with authority you see!!! Or perhaps people who question Cagw were more likely to get detention in school, or contest parking tickets as adults.
We’re missing a valuable piece of information. What is the frequency of these searches by word?
“Lang specifically checked how often, when and where citizens in 205 cities in the US used the search terms “global warming,” “climate change” and “weather.”
When there are weather events, I frequently check the “weather” forecast. Since I live in Florida, our weather changes frequently on most days.
We need to know the search frequency distribution of these three words. If it is 85% weather and 15% global warming or climate change, then this paper is worthless. Wonder if the author included this vital info in his paper?
Bill
In an earlier age, this sort of superstition was placated by throwing some virgins into the volcano.
Unfortunately, leftists don’t have any virgins.
Well, no female virgins, anyway.
If this is what is passing for “climate science” these days, we have won. Really. Passing off insults to someone you already admit you don’t understand, or want to, as science is shameful.
The overall level of outright stupidity on display here is truly stunning.
BallBounces says: “So, there is now scientific proof that climate changes causes Google searches?”
Thanks. That made me laugh. Nice way to start the day!
62 F degrees this morning in central Oklahoma in mid- July….brrrr. I sure hope this is weather and not climate.
…..so it was the more educated regions that elected Obama? Gaia help us!
Nobody experiences global climate (described by the world wide average and other statistics of weather), they experience very local weather. All those educated Democrats running off to investigate climate change because they believe they detected a small change in the average weather where they live are climate change hypochondriacs and useful idiots of the political movement(s) using Climate Change to further their agendas. People who run off to investigate climate change because they believe they detect very large deviations in local weather are lesser useful idiots . . . uneducated Republicans aren’t entirely off the hook. It’s absurd to hypothesize that either Democrats or Republicans could, by personal observation, detect climate change. That makes this a hit piece highlighting how educated enlightened Democrats either care more or are smarter than uneducated uncaring Republicans. What it actually indicates is that the Democrats are bigger dupes than the Republicans.
“When it’s just a warmer than usual month, more Democratic and well educated areas are picking up on that signal,
but it’s a spike in temperature over one or more days that Republican and less-educated areas are keying in to climate change,” Lang said, with a devious grin.
It’s just manipulative political propaganda dressed in cheap scientific drag. Who funds these pseudo-academics, and why are they given a stage?
From a screen-shot of The Conversation/au last week (July 14), highlighting what Australian academics, supported by Australian Universities, think is important for public consumption right now:
“More educated,” not “better educated.”